We, workers and inhabitants of the city of St. Petersburg, members of various sosloviia (estates of the realm), our wives, children, and helpless old parents, have come to you, Sovereign, to seek justice and protection. We are impoverished and oppressed, we are burdened with work, and insulted. We are treated not like humans [but] like slaves who must suffer a bitter fate and keep silent. And we have suffered, but we only get pushed deeper and deeper into a gulf of misery, ignorance, and lack of rights. Despotism and arbitrariness are suffocating us, we are gasping for breath. Sovereign, we have no strength left. We have reached the limit of our patience. We have come to that terrible moment when it is better to die than to continue unbearable sufferings.

And so we left our work and declared to our employers that we will not return to work until they meet our demands. We do not ask much; we only want that without which life is hard labor and eternal suffering. Our first request was that our employers discuss our needs together with us. But they refused to do this; they denied us the right to speak about our needs, on the grounds that the law does not provide us with such a right. Also unlawful were our other requests: to reduce the working day to eight hours; for them to set wages together with us and by agreement with us; to examine our disputes with lower-level factory administrators; to increase the wages of unskilled workers and women to one ruble per day; to abolish overtime work; to provide medical care attentively and without insult; to build shops so that it is possible to work there and not face death from the awful drafts, rain and snow.

Our employers and the factory administrators considered all this to be illegal: every one of our requests was a crime, and our desire to improve our condition was slanderous insolence.

Sovereign, there are thousands of us here; outwardly we are human beings, but in reality neither we nor the Russian people [narod] as a whole are provided with any human rights, even the right to speak, to think, to assemble, to discuss our needs, or to take measure to improve our conditions. They have enslaved us and they did so under the protection of your officials, with their aid and with their cooperation. They imprison and send into exile any one of us who has the courage to speak on behalf of the interests of the working class and of the people. They punish us for a good heart and a responsive spirit as if for a crime. To pity a downtrodden and tormented person with no rights is to commit a grave crime. The entire working people and the peasants are subjected to the proizvol (arbitrariness) of a bureaucratic administration composed of embezzlers of public funds and thieves who not only have not concern at all for the interests of the Russian people but who harm those interests. The bureaucratic administration has reduced the country to complete destitution, drawn it into a shameful war, and brings Russia ever further towards ruin. We, the workers and the people, have no voice in the expenditure of the enormous sums that are collected from us. We do not even know where the money collected from the impoverished people goes. The people is deprived of any possibility of expressing its wishes and demands, or of participating in the establishment of taxes and in their expenditure. Workers are deprived of the possibility of organizing into unions to defend their interests. Sovereign! Does all this accord with the law of God, by Whose grace you reign? And is it possible to live under such laws? Would it not be better if we, the toiling people of all Russia, died? Let the capitalists–exploiters of the working class–and the bureaucrats–embezzlers of public funds and the pillagers of the Russian people–live and enjoy themselves.

Sovereign, this is what we face and this is the reason that we have gathered before the walls of your palace. Here we seek our last salvation. Do not refuse to come to the aid of your people; lead it out of the grave of poverty, ignorance, and lack of rights; grant it the opportunity to determine its own destiny, and deliver it from them the unbearable yoke of the bureaucrats. Tear down the wall that separates you from your people and let it rule the country together with you. You have been placed [on the throne] for the happiness of the people; the bureaucrats, however, snatch this happiness out of our hands, and it never reaches us; we get only grief and humiliation. Sovereign, examine our requests attentively and without any anger; they incline not to evil, but to the good, both for us and for you. Ours is not the voice of insolence but of the realization that we must get out of a situation that is unbearable for everyone. Russia is too big, her needs are to diverse and many, for her to be ruled only by bureaucrats. We need popular representation; it is necessary for the people to help itself and to administer itself. After all, only the people knows its real needs. Do not fend off its help, accept it, and order immediately, at once, that representatives of the Russian land from all classes, all estates of the realm be summoned, including representatives from the workers. Let the capitalist be there, and the worker, and the bureaucrat, and the priest, and the doctor and the teacher–let everyone, whoever they are, elect their representatives. Let everyone be free and equal in his voting rights, and to that end order that elections to the Constituent Assembly be conducted under universal, secret and equal suffrage.

This is our main request, everything is based on it; it is the main and only poultice for our painful wounds, without which those wounds must freely bleed and bring us to a quick death.

But no single measure can heal all our wounds. Other measures are necessary, and we, representing of all of Russia’s toiling class, frankly and openly speak to you, Sovereign, as to a father, about them.

The following are necessary:

I. Measures against the ignorance of the Russian people and against its lack of rights

1. Immediate freedom and return home for all those who have suffered for their political and religious convictions, for strike activity, and for peasant disorders.

2. Immediate proclamation of the freedom and inviolability of the person, of freedom of speech and of the press, of freedom of assembly, and of freedom of conscience in matters of religion.

3. Universal and compulsory public education at state expense.

4. Accountability of government ministers to the people and a guarantee of lawful administration.

5. Equality of all before the law without exception.

6. Separation of church and state

II. Measures against the poverty of the people

1. Abolition of indirect taxes and their replacement by a direct, progressive income tax.

2. Abolition of redemption payments, cheap credit, and the gradual transfer of land to the people.

3. Naval Ministry contracts should be filled in Russia, not abroad.

4. Termination of the war according to the will of the people.

III. Measures against the oppression of labor by capital

1. Abolition of the office of factory inspector.

2. Establishment in factories and plants of permanent commissions elected by the workers, which jointly with the administration are to investigate all complaints coming from individual workers. A worker cannot be fired except by a resolution of this commission.

7. Guaranteed participation of representatives of the working classes in drafting a law on state insurance for workers–at once.

These, sovereign, are our main needs, about which we have come to you; only when they are satisfied will the liberation of our Motherland from slavery and destitution be possible, only then can she flourish, only then can workers organize to defend their interests from insolent exploitation by capitalists and by the bureaucratic administration that plunders and suffocates the people. Give the order, swear to meet these needs, and you will make Russia both happy and glorious, and your name will be fixed in our hearts and the hearts of our posterity for all time–but if you do not give the order, if you do not respond to our prayer, then we shall die here, on this square, in front of your palace. We have nowhere else to go and no reason to. There are only two roads for us, one to freedom and happiness, the other to the grave. Let our lives be sacrificed for suffering Russia. We do not regret that sacrifice, we embrace it eagerly.

I heartily accept the motto,—”That government is best which governs least”; and I should like to
see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which
also I believe,—”That government is best which governs not at all”; and when men are prepared
for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an
expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. …
The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their
will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it…. I ask for,
not at once no government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known what
kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.
After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority
are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule, is not because they are most likely to be in
the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the
strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice,…
…Can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but
conscience?—in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is
applicable? Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to
the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and
subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.
The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right. It is
truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience… Law never made men a whit more just;
and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of
injustice. A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is, that you may see a file of
soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all, marching in admirable
order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and
consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart.
They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in which they are concerned; they are all
peaceably inclined. Now, what are they? Men at all? or small movable forts and magazines, at
the service of some unscrupulous man in power?
. . . The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies.
They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most
cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put
themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be
manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of
straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as
these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others, as most legislators, politicians,
lawyers, ministers, and office-holders, serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely
make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God. A
very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the state with
their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly
treated as enemies by it.
How does it become a man to behave toward this American government to-day? I answer, that
he cannot without disgrace be associated with it. I cannot for an instant recognize that political
organization as my government which is the slave’s government also.
All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist,
the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable. But almost all
say that such is not the case now. But such was the case, they think, in the Revolution of ’75. If
one were to tell me that this was a bad government because it taxed certain foreign commodities
brought to its ports, it is most probable that I should not make an ado about it, for I can do
without them. All machines have their friction; and possibly this does enough good to
counterbalance the evil. …But when the friction comes to have its machine, and oppression and
robbery are organized, I say, let us not have such a machine any longer. In other words, when a
sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves,
and a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to
military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize. What makes
this duty the more urgent is the fact that the country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the
invading army.
It is not so important that many should be as good as you, as that there be some absolute
goodness somewhere; for that will leaven the whole lump. There are thousands who are in
opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them;
…They hesitate, and they regret, and sometimes they petition; but they do nothing in earnest and
with effect.
… Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your
desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish
it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of
men. When the majority shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they
are indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be abolished by their vote.
Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and
obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men generally, under
such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to
alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it
is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse.
Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise
minority? Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage its citizens to
be on the alert to point out its faults, and do better than it would have them? Why does it always
crucify Christ, and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and
Franklin rebels?If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go;
perchance it will wear smooth—certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring,
or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether
the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be
the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter friction to
stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong
which I condemn.
… I know this well, that if one thousand, if one hundred, if ten men whom I could name—if ten
honest men only—ay, if one HONEST man, in this State of Massachusetts, ceasing to hold
slaves, were actually to withdraw from this copartnership, and be locked up in the county jail
therefor, it would be the abolition of slavery in America. For it matters not how small the
beginning may seem to be: what is once well done is done forever…
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.
…where the State places those who are not with her, but against her… [it is] the only house in a
slave State in which a free man can abide with honor. If any think that their influence would be
lost there, and their voices no longer afflict the ear of the State, that they would not be as an
enemy within its walls, they do not know by how much truth is stronger than error…
. . . I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night;
and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, two or three feet thick, the door of wood and
iron, a foot thick, and the iron grating which strained the light, I could not help being struck with
the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones,
to be locked up… I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of
stone and mortar. I felt as if I alone of all my townsmen had paid my tax… I saw that the State
was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not
know its friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied it.
Thus the State never intentionally confronts a man’s sense, intellectual or moral, but only his
body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength.
. . . The authority of government… —is still an impure one: to be strictly just, it must have the
sanction and consent of the governed. It can have no pure right over my person and property but
what I concede to it. The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited
monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual. Even the
Chinese philosopher was wise enough to regard the individual as the basis of the empire. Is a
democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible
to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man? There will never be
a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher
and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him
accordingly…. A State which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it
ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious State, which also I have
imagined, but not yet anywhere seen.

1
Given as a lecture at the Concord Lyceum in 1848 and published the following year under the title: Resistance to Civil
Government.

On March 1st, the sailors organized a mass meeting in Kronstadt, which was attended also by the Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, Kalinin (the presiding officer of the Republic of Russia), the Commander of the Kronstadt Fortress, Kuzmin, and the Chairman of the Kronstadt Soviet, Vassiliev. The meeting, held with the knowledge of the Executive Committee of the Kronstadt Soviet, passed a resolution approved by the sailors, the garrison, and the citizens’ meeting of 16,000 persons. Kalinin, Kuzmin, and Vassiliev spoke against the resolution, which later became the basis of the conflict between Kronstadt and the Government. It voiced the popular demand for Soviets elected by the free choice of the, people. It is worth reproducing that document in full, that the reader may be enabled to judge the true character of the Kronstadt demands. The Resolution read:

Having beard the Report of the Representatives sent by the General Meeting of Ship Crews to Petrograd to investigate the situation there, Resolved:

In view of the fact that the present Soviets do not express the will of the workers and the peasants, immediately to hold new elections by secret ballot, the preelection campaign to have full freedom of agitation among the workers and peasants;

To establish freedom of speech and press for workers and peasants, for Anarchists and left Socialist parties;

To secure freedom of assembly for labour unions and peasant organizations;

To call a non-partisan Conference of the workers, Red Army soldiers and sailors of Petrograd, Kronstadt, and of Petrograd Province, no later than March 10, 1921;

To liberate all political prisoners of Socialist parties, as well as all workers, peasants, soldiers, and sailors imprisoned in connection with the labour and peasant movements;

To elect a Commission to review the cases of those held in prisons and concentration camps;

To abolish all politotdeli [Political bureaus] because no party should be given special privileges in the propagation of its ideas or receive the financial support of the Government for such purposes, Instead there should be established educational and cultural commissions, locally elected and financed by the Government.

To abolish immediately all zagryaditelniye otryadi; [Armed units organized by the Bolsheviki for the purpose of suppressing traffic and confiscating foodstuffs]

To equalize the rations of all who work, with the exception of those employed in trades detrimental to health;

To abolish the Communist fighting detachments in all branches of the Army, as well as the Communist guards kept on duty in mills and factories. Should such guards or military detachments be found necessary, they are to be appointed in the Army from the ranks, and in the factories according to the judgment of the workers;

To give the peasants full freedom of action in regard to their land, and also the right to keep cattle, on condition that the peasants manage with their own means; that is, without employing hired labour;

To request all branches of the Army, as well as our comrades the military kursanti, to concur in our resolutions;

To demand that the press give the fullest publicity to our resolutions;

To appoint a Travelling Commission of Control;

To permit free kustarnoye [Individual small-scale] production by one’s own efforts.

……………………………………………………………….

It was ignored.

On March 7th Trotsky began the bombardment of Kronstadt, and on the 17th the fortress and city were taken, after numerous assaults involving terrific human sacrifice. Thus Kronstadt was “liquidated” and the “counterrevolutionary plot” quenched in blood. The “conquest” of the city was characterized by ruthless savagery, although not a single one of the Communists arrested by the Kronstadt sailors had been injured or killed by them. Even before the storming of the fortress the Bolsheviki summarily executed numerous soldiers’ of the Red Army whose revolutionary spirit and solidarity caused them to refuse to participate in the bloodbath.

Several days after the “glorious victory” over Kronstadt Lenin said at the Tenth Congress of the Communist Party of Russia: “The sailors did not want the counter-revolutionists’ but they did not want us, either.” And — irony of Bolshevism! — at that very Congress Lenin advocated free trade — a more reactionary step than any charged to the Kronstadt sailors.

Pre-Christian and Christian times pursue opposite goals; the former wants to idealize the real, the
latter to realize the ideal; the former seeks the “holy spirit,” the latter the “glorified body.” Hence the
former closes with insensitivity to the real, with “contempt for the world”; the latter will end with the
casting off of the ideal, with “contempt for the spirit.”
The opposition of the real and the ideal is an irreconcilable one, and the one can never become the
other: if the ideal became the real, it would no longer be the ideal; and, if the real became the ideal, the
ideal alone would be, but not at all the real. The opposition of the two is not to be vanquished otherwise
than if some one annihilates both. Only in this “some one,” the third party, does the opposition find its
end; otherwise idea and reality will ever fail to coincide. The idea cannot be so realized as to remain
idea, but is realized only when it dies as idea; and it is the same with the real.
But now we have before us in the ancients adherents of the idea, in the moderns adherents of
reality. Neither can get clear of the opposition, and both pine only, the one party for the spirit, and,
when this craving of the ancient world seemed to be satisfied and this spirit to have come, the others
immediately for the secularization of this spirit again, which must forever remain a “pious wish.”
The pious wish of the ancients was sanctity, the pious wish of the moderns is corporeity. But, as
antiquity had to go down if its longing was to be satisfied (for it consisted only in the longing), so
too corporeity can never be attained within the ring of Christianness. As the trait of sanctification or
purification goes through the old world (the washings, etc.), so that of incorporation goes through the
Christian world: God plunges down into this world, becomes flesh, and wants to redeem it, e.g., fill
it with himself; but, since he is “the idea” or “the spirit,” people (e.g. Hegel) in the end introduce the
idea into everything, into the world, and prove “that the idea is, that reason is, in everything.” “Man”
corresponds in the culture of today to what the heathen Stoics set up as “the wise man”; the latter, like
the former, a — fleshless being. The unreal “wise man,” this bodiless “holy one” of the Stoics, became
a real person, a bodily “Holy One,” in God made flesh; the unreal “man,” the bodiless ego, will become
real in the corporeal ego, in me.
There winds its way through Christianity the question about the “existence of God,” which, taken up
ever and ever again, gives testimony that the craving for existence, corporeity, personality, reality, was
incessantly busying the heart because it never found a satisfying solution. At last the question about
the existence of God fell, but only to rise up again in the proposition that the “divine” had existence
(Feuerbach). But this too has no existence, and neither will the last refuge, that the “purely human”
is realizable, afford shelter much longer. No idea has existence, for none is capable of corporeity. The
scholastic contention of realism and nominalism has the same content; in short, this spins itself out
through all Christian history, and cannot end in it.
The world of Christians is working at realizing ideas in the individual relations of life, the institutions
and laws of the Church and the State; but they make resistance, and always keep back something
unembodied (unrealizable). Nevertheless this embodiment is restlessly rushed after, no matter in what
degree corporeity constantly fails to result.
203For realities matter little to the realizer, but it matters everything that they be realizations of the
idea. Hence he is ever examining anew whether the realized does in truth have the idea, its kernel,
dwelling in it; and in testing the real he at the same time tests the idea, whether it is realizable as he
thinks it, or is only thought by him incorrectly, and for that reason unfeasibly.
The Christian is no longer to care for family, State, etc., as existences; Christians are not to sacrifice
themselves for these “divine things” like the ancients, but these are only to be utilized to make the
spirit alive in them. The real family has become indifferent, and there is to arise out of it an ideal
one which would then be the “truly real,” a sacred family, blessed by God, or, according to the liberal
way of thinking, a “rational” family. With the ancients, family, State, fatherland, is divine as a thing
extant; with the moderns it is still awaiting divinity, as extant it is only sinful, earthly, and has still
to be “redeemed,” i. e., to become truly real. This has the following meaning: The family, etc., is not
the extant and real, but the divine, the idea, is extant and real; whether this family will make itself
real by taking up the truly real, the idea, is still unsettled. It is not the individual’s task to serve the
family as the divine, but, reversely, to serve the divine and to bring to it the still undivine family, to
subject everything in the idea’s name, to set up the idea’s banner everywhere, to bring the idea to real
efficacy.
But, since the concern of Christianity, as of antiquity, is for the divine, they always come out at this
again on their opposite ways. At the end of heathenism the divine becomes the extramundane, at the
end of Christianity the intramundane. Antiquity does not succeed in putting it entirely outside the
world, and, when Christianity accomplishes this task, the divine instantly longs to get back into the
world and wants to “redeem” the world. But within Christianity it does not and cannot come to this,
that the divine as intramundane should really become the mundane itself: there is enough left that does
and must maintain itself unpenetrated as the “bad,” irrational, accidental, “egoistic,” the “mundane” in
the bad sense. Christianity begins with God’s becoming man, and carries on its work of conversion
and redemption through all time in order to prepare for God a reception in all men and in everything
human, and to penetrate everything with the spirit: it sticks to preparing a place for the “spirit.”
When the accent was at last laid on Man or mankind, it was again the idea that they “pronounced
eternal.” “Man does not die!” They thought they had now found the reality of the idea: Man is the I of
history, of the world’s history; it is he, this ideal, that really develops, i.e. realizes, himself. He is the
really real and corporeal one, for history is his body, in which individuals are only members. Christ
is the I of the world’s history, even of the pre-Christian; in modern apprehension it is man, the figure
of Christ has developed into the figure of man: man as such, man absolutely, is the “central point” of
history. In “man” the imaginary beginning returns again; for “man” is as imaginary as Christ is. “Man,”
as the I of the world’s history, closes the cycle of Christian apprehensions.
Christianity’s magic circle would be broken if the strained relation between existence and calling,
e.g., between me as I am and me as I should be, ceased; it persists only as the longing of the idea for
its bodiliness, and vanishes with the relaxing separation of the two: only when the idea remains —
idea, as man or mankind is indeed a bodiless idea, is Christianity still extant. The corporeal idea, the
corporeal or “completed” spirit, floats before the Christian as “the end of the days” or as the “goal of
history”; it is not present time to him.
The individual can only have a part in the founding of the Kingdom of God, or, according to the
modern notion of the same thing, in the development and history of humanity; and only so far as he
has a part in it does a Christian, or according to the modern expression human, value pertain to him;
for the rest he is dust and a worm-bag. That the individual is of himself a world’s history, and possesses
his property in the rest of the world’s history, goes beyond what is Christian. To the Christian the
204world’s history is the higher thing, because it is the history of Christ or “man”; to the egoist only his
history has value, because he wants to develop only himself not the mankind-idea, not God’s plan,
not the purposes of Providence, not liberty, etc. He does not look upon himself as a tool of the idea or
a vessel of God, he recognizes no calling, he does not fancy that he exists for the further development
of mankind and that he must contribute his mite to it, but he lives himself out, careless of how well or
ill humanity may fare thereby. If it were not open to confusion with the idea that a state of nature is to
be praised, one might recall Lenau’s “Three Gypsies.” – What, am I in the world to realize ideas? To do
my part by my citizenship, say, toward the realization of the idea “State,” or by marriage, as husband
and father, to bring the idea of the family into an existence? What does such a calling concern me! I
live after a calling as little as the flower grows and gives fragrance after a calling.
The ideal “Man” is realized when the Christian apprehension turns about and becomes the proposi-
tion, “I, this unique one, am man.” The conceptual question, “what is man?” — has then changed into
the personal question, “who is man?” With “what” the concept was sought for, in order to realize it;
with “who” it is no longer any question at all, but the answer is personally on hand at once in the
asker: the question answers itself.
They say of God, “Names name thee not.” That holds good of me: no concept expresses me, nothing
that is designated as my essence exhausts me; they are only names. Likewise they say of God that he
is perfect and has no calling to strive after perfection. That too holds good of me alone.
I am owner of my might, and I am so when I know myself as unique. In the unique one the owner
himself returns into his creative nothing, of which he is born. Every higher essence above me, be it God,
be it man, weakens the feeling of my uniqueness, and pales only before the sun of this consciousness.
If I concern myself for myself,[Stell’ Ich auf Mich meine Sache. Literally, “if I set my affair on myself”]
the unique one, then my concern rests on its transitory, mortal creator, who consumes himself, and I
may say:
All things are nothing to me. *

I beg of you to maintain order. Are they not revolutionaries,
those who are here? Are there not many rebel soldiers here? Are there not
many army men here? Then we must have discipline here, and everyone must
keep silent. It is my duty to speak here tonight. I am faced with one of
the perhaps most difficult of my duties in this long process of struggle
which began in Santiago de Cuba on 30 November 1956. The people are
listening. The revolutionary fighters are listening, and the soldiers of
the army are listening. Their fate is in our hands.

I believe that we are at a crossroads in our history. The tyranny
has been overthrown. The happiness is tremendous, but nonetheless much
remains to be done still. Let us not deceive ourselves in believing that
what lies ahead will all be easy. Perhaps all that lies ahead will be more
difficult.

To state the truth is the duty of every revolutionary. To deceive
the people, to awaken in them deceitful illusions will always result in the
worst of consequences, and I believe that the people must be warned against
an excess of optimism. How did the rebel army win the war? By telling the
truth. And how did the tyranny lose it? By deceiving the soldiers.

As we were faced with the duty, we made this clear over the Rebel
Radio and warned all the comrades, so that the same would not happen to
them. This was not the case with the army, in which all of the troops fell
into error, because the officers and soldiers were never told the truth,
and this is where I wish to begin. Or rather I wish to continue in this
pattern, that of always telling the people the truth. A period of time has
elapsed, which perhaps will represent a considerable advance. Here we are
in the capital, in Columbia, the revolutionary forces are triumphant. The
government has been established and recognized by many countries in the
world. Seemingly peace has been won, but, however, we should not be
optimistic. As we proceeded here today, while the people laughed and
expressed joy, we were concerned, and the fact that the crowd which
gathered to welcome us was most unusual and the happiness of the people was
so great made our concern the greater, because it made our responsibility
to history and to the people of Cuba the greater.

The revolution is no longer confronted with an army ready for
combat. Who, in the future, can the enemies of the revolution be? Who,
since the people are victorious, can be the enemies of the revolution in
times to come? The worst enemies of the Cuban revolution in the future may
be the revolutionaries themselves. On one occasion I said to a rebel
fighter that when we are not faced with the enemy, when the war has ended,
the only enemies the revolution can have will be we ourselves, and for this
reason I always say that we must be more demanding of the rebel soldiers
than of anyone, because it will depend on them whether the revolution
triumphs or fails.

There are many kinds of revolutionaries, and many kinds of
revolution. We have been hearing talk of revolution for a long time. Even
on 10 March, there was talk of revolutionaries. We have heard talk of
revolutionaries for a long time, too. I recall my first impression of
revolutionaries. Later, study and some maturity gave me an idea of what a
revolution really was, and what a revolutionary really was. But my first
impression of a revolutionary goes back to childhood. So and so was in
this or that battle, and such and such was a revolutionary. In the name of
revolution a caste was created, and there were revolutionaries then who
wanted to live off the revolution. And it is possible that those who talk
the most were those who had done the least, and it is certain that they
went to the ministries to seek public posts, hastening to profit from the
revolution. And we cannot fall into this, or else we would be throwing
away, as they did, the revolutionary ideal.

I recall, from my first impressions as a boy, those
revolutionaries who went around wearing 45 pistols in their belts and
wanted to do things their own way. One had to fear them because they were
capable of killing anyone. They went to the officers of high officials,
threatening them in order to obtain what they wanted, which these officials
had to give them. And in fact, one wonders: where is the revolution they
undertook? Because there was no revolution and there were very few
revolutionaries. The first question those of us who undertook the
revolution must ask ourselves is what our intentions were in doing so, and
whether an ambition, an ignoble desire, was hidden in any of us. We must
ask ourselves if each of the combatants in this revolution had a firm and
heartfelt idea or thought because of some egotistical goal or in the
pursuit of other unknown but inadmissible goals.

If we undertook this revolution thinking that if only the tyranny
were overthrow, we could enjoy the advantages of power, planning to mount
the throne and live like a king, in a little palace, expecting life to be a
lark for us from then on, if this was why we became revolutionaries, if we
thought of removing one minister in order to impose another, to remove one
man to impose another, it would not have been worth the trouble undertaking
the revolution. But I know that in each one of us there was a real spirit
of sacrifice. I know that in each one of us there was a desire to do this,
expecting no reward. And if we were ready to give up everything in
advance, we were ready also to carry out our duty as sincere
revolutionaries.

This question must be asked because the fate of Cuba, of ourselves
and of the people, may depend to a great extent on this examination of our
consciences. When I hear talk of columns, of battle fronts, of troops, I
always reflect. Because here our strongest column, our best unit, the only
troops capable of winning the war alone are the people.

No general can do more than the people. No army can do more than
the people. I was asked what troops I would prefer to command, and I
answered I would prefer to command the people. Because the people are
unconquerable and it was the people who won this war, because we had no
army, we had no fleet, we had no tanks, we had no planes, we had no heavy
guns, we had no military academies or recruiting and training teams. We
had neither divisions nor regiments nor companies nor platoons, but we have
the confidence of the people, and with this alone we were able to win the
battle for liberty.

The people have won this war. And I say this in case anyone
believes that the people have been deceived. And therefore, the people are
more important than anything. But there is something else: the revolution
does not serve my interests as a person, nor those of any other commander
or captain. The interests the revolution serves are those of the people.
Those who win or lose by the revolution are the people, and it was the
people who suffered the horrors of these years, the people who had to
decide if in ten, fifteen or twenty years they and their children and their
grandchildren would still by suffering from the horrors to which the people
of Cuba were subjected under such dictatorships as those of Machado and
Batista.

It is of great concern to the people whether we will do well by
this revolution just completed, and the one before that, etc., and thus it
is the people who will suffer the consequence of our errors, because there
is no error without consequences for the people. There is no political
error for which one does not pay sooner or later. Today’s circumstances
are not the same as those of yesterday. For example, as of the present
there is a greater opportunity than ever for the revolution to fulfill its
destiny fully. This is perhaps why the joy of our people today is so
great. But there is much more to be added. One of the greatest desires of
the nation, as a result of the errors from which it suffered thanks to
repression and war, was that for peace, peace with freedom, peace with
justice and peace with law. No one asks for another kind of peace, because
Batista spoke of peace, spoke of order, but no one wanted that peace and
that order. Away with him, because this would have been peace at the cost
of subjection. We here want peace as it is: to the benefit of the people.
Peace without dictatorship, without crime, without censorship, without
repression. Perhaps this is the joy which is most keenly felt now.
Perhaps this is the joy of the Cuban mothers, the mothers of soldiers or
revolutionaries, the mothers of any citizens who are today aware that their
sons are finally free of danger; thus the greatest crime which could be
committed in Cuba today would be a crime against peace, and this no one
would pardon — it would be the plotting, by anyone against peace. Anyone
today who does anything to threaten peace in Cuba, anyone who puts the calm
and happiness of a regime of Cuban freedom in danger is a criminal and a
traitor. Those who are not prepared to sacrifice something for peace,
those who are not prepared to sacrifice everything for peace are criminals
and traitors. As this is my belief, I say and I swear before my fellow
citizens and all of my comrades that our movement is the best safeguard for
peace in Cuba. From this moment on, the people can be sure of, are
guaranteed, a regime of respect, progress and peace, because I am a man who
has indeed sacrificed something, as I have proved this on more than one
occasion in my life, because I have taught this to my comrades, and
therefore, I presume to have sufficient moral authority and strength to
speak at a ceremony like this. And the first among those to whom we must
speak of this are the revolutionaries, and if it were necessary, or rather
because it is necessary, I would say here: that decade which followed the
fall of Machado is not so far off. Perhaps one of the worst evils in that
struggle was the proliferation of revolutionary groups which soon destroyed
each other, and as a result what happened was that Batista came and was
left master of the revolution in Cuba.

When the 26 July Movement was organized, and even when we
undertook this war, I beliFIDEL CASTRO SPEECH DELIVERED IN CIUDAD LIBERTAD

[Speech by Fidel Castro; Havana, Revolucion, Spanish, 9 January 1959]

Fellow citizens:

I beg of you to maintain order. Are they not revolutionaries,
those who are here? Are there not many rebel soldiers here? Are there not
many army men here? Then we must have discipline here, and everyone must
keep silent. It is my duty to speak here tonight. I am faced with one of
the perhaps most difficult of my duties in this long process of struggle
which began in Santiago de Cuba on 30 November 1956. The people are
listening. The revolutionary fighters are listening, and the soldiers of
the army are listening. Their fate is in our hands.

I believe that we are at a crossroads in our history. The tyranny
has been overthrown. The happiness is tremendous, but nonetheless much
remains to be done still. Let us not deceive ourselves in believing that
what lies ahead will all be easy. Perhaps all that lies ahead will be more
difficult.

To state the truth is the duty of every revolutionary. To deceive
the people, to awaken in them deceitful illusions will always result in the
worst of consequences, and I believe that the people must be warned against
an excess of optimism. How did the rebel army win the war? By telling the
truth. And how did the tyranny lose it? By deceiving the soldiers.

As we were faced with the duty, we made this clear over the Rebel
Radio and warned all the comrades, so that the same would not happen to
them. This was not the case with the army, in which all of the troops fell
into error, because the officers and soldiers were never told the truth,
and this is where I wish to begin. Or rather I wish to continue in this
pattern, that of always telling the people the truth. A period of time has
elapsed, which perhaps will represent a considerable advance. Here we are
in the capital, in Columbia, the revolutionary forces are triumphant. The
government has been established and recognized by many countries in the
world. Seemingly peace has been won, but, however, we should not be
optimistic. As we proceeded here today, while the people laughed and
expressed joy, we were concerned, and the fact that the crowd which
gathered to welcome us was most unusual and the happiness of the people was
so great made our concern the greater, because it made our responsibility
to history and to the people of Cuba the greater.

The revolution is no longer confronted with an army ready for
combat. Who, in the future, can the enemies of the revolution be? Who,
since the people are victorious, can be the enemies of the revolution in
times to come? The worst enemies of the Cuban revolution in the future may
be the revolutionaries themselves. On one occasion I said to a rebel
fighter that when we are not faced with the enemy, when the war has ended,
the only enemies the revolution can have will be we ourselves, and for this
reason I always say that we must be more demanding of the rebel soldiers
than of anyone, because it will depend on them whether the revolution
triumphs or fails.

There are many kinds of revolutionaries, and many kinds of
revolution. We have been hearing talk of revolution for a long time. Even
on 10 March, there was talk of revolutionaries. We have heard talk of
revolutionaries for a long time, too. I recall my first impression of
revolutionaries. Later, study and some maturity gave me an idea of what a
revolution really was, and what a revolutionary really was. But my first
impression of a revolutionary goes back to childhood. So and so was in
this or that battle, and such and such was a revolutionary. In the name of
revolution a caste was created, and there were revolutionaries then who
wanted to live off the revolution. And it is possible that those who talk
the most were those who had done the least, and it is certain that they
went to the ministries to seek public posts, hastening to profit from the
revolution. And we cannot fall into this, or else we would be throwing
away, as they did, the revolutionary ideal.

I recall, from my first impressions as a boy, those
revolutionaries who went around wearing 45 pistols in their belts and
wanted to do things their own way. One had to fear them because they were
capable of killing anyone. They went to the officers of high officials,
threatening them in order to obtain what they wanted, which these officials
had to give them. And in fact, one wonders: where is the revolution they
undertook? Because there was no revolution and there were very few
revolutionaries. The first question those of us who undertook the
revolution must ask ourselves is what our intentions were in doing so, and
whether an ambition, an ignoble desire, was hidden in any of us. We must
ask ourselves if each of the combatants in this revolution had a firm and
heartfelt idea or thought because of some egotistical goal or in the
pursuit of other unknown but inadmissible goals.

If we undertook this revolution thinking that if only the tyranny
were overthrow, we could enjoy the advantages of power, planning to mount
the throne and live like a king, in a little palace, expecting life to be a
lark for us from then on, if this was why we became revolutionaries, if we
thought of removing one minister in order to impose another, to remove one
man to impose another, it would not have been worth the trouble undertaking
the revolution. But I know that in each one of us there was a real spirit
of sacrifice. I know that in each one of us there was a desire to do this,
expecting no reward. And if we were ready to give up everything in
advance, we were ready also to carry out our duty as sincere
revolutionaries.

This question must be asked because the fate of Cuba, of ourselves
and of the people, may depend to a great extent on this examination of our
consciences. When I hear talk of columns, of battle fronts, of troops, I
always reflect. Because here our strongest column, our best unit, the only
troops capable of winning the war alone are the people.

No general can do more than the people. No army can do more than
the people. I was asked what troops I would prefer to command, and I
answered I would prefer to command the people. Because the people are
unconquerable and it was the people who won this war, because we had no
army, we had no fleet, we had no tanks, we had no planes, we had no heavy
guns, we had no military academies or recruiting and training teams. We
had neither divisions nor regiments nor companies nor platoons, but we have
the confidence of the people, and with this alone we were able to win the
battle for liberty.

The people have won this war. And I say this in case anyone
believes that the people have been deceived. And therefore, the people are
more important than anything. But there is something else: the revolution
does not serve my interests as a person, nor those of any other commander
or captain. The interests the revolution serves are those of the people.
Those who win or lose by the revolution are the people, and it was the
people who suffered the horrors of these years, the people who had to
decide if in ten, fifteen or twenty years they and their children and their
grandchildren would still by suffering from the horrors to which the people
of Cuba were subjected under such dictatorships as those of Machado and
Batista.

It is of great concern to the people whether we will do well by
this revolution just completed, and the one before that, etc., and thus it
is the people who will suffer the consequence of our errors, because there
is no error without consequences for the people. There is no political
error for which one does not pay sooner or later. Today’s circumstances
are not the same as those of yesterday. For example, as of the present
there is a greater opportunity than ever for the revolution to fulfill its
destiny fully. This is perhaps why the joy of our people today is so
great. But there is much more to be added. One of the greatest desires of
the nation, as a result of the errors from which it suffered thanks to
repression and war, was that for peace, peace with freedom, peace with
justice and peace with law. No one asks for another kind of peace, because
Batista spoke of peace, spoke of order, but no one wanted that peace and
that order. Away with him, because this would have been peace at the cost
of subjection. We here want peace as it is: to the benefit of the people.
Peace without dictatorship, without crime, without censorship, without
repression. Perhaps this is the joy which is most keenly felt now.
Perhaps this is the joy of the Cuban mothers, the mothers of soldiers or
revolutionaries, the mothers of any citizens who are today aware that their
sons are finally free of danger; thus the greatest crime which could be
committed in Cuba today would be a crime against peace, and this no one
would pardon — it would be the plotting, by anyone against peace. Anyone
today who does anything to threaten peace in Cuba, anyone who puts the calm
and happiness of a regime of Cuban freedom in danger is a criminal and a
traitor. Those who are not prepared to sacrifice something for peace,
those who are not prepared to sacrifice everything for peace are criminals
and traitors. As this is my belief, I say and I swear before my fellow
citizens and all of my comrades that our movement is the best safeguard for
peace in Cuba. From this moment on, the people can be sure of, are
guaranteed, a regime of respect, progress and peace, because I am a man who
has indeed sacrificed something, as I have proved this on more than one
occasion in my life, because I have taught this to my comrades, and
therefore, I presume to have sufficient moral authority and strength to
speak at a ceremony like this. And the first among those to whom we must
speak of this are the revolutionaries, and if it were necessary, or rather
because it is necessary, I would say here: that decade which followed the
fall of Machado is not so far off. Perhaps one of the worst evils in that
struggle was the proliferation of revolutionary groups which soon destroyed
each other, and as a result what happened was that Batista came and was
left master of the revolution in Cuba.

When the 26 July Movement was organized, and even when we
undertook this war, I believed that if indeed the sacrifices we were making
were very great and the struggle would be very long (and it only lasted two
years), they were for us but a step, two years of hard combat from the time
we began the struggle again with a handful of men until the time we reached
the capital of the republic — despite the sacrifices which lay ahead, I
was comforted by one idea, that the 26 July Movement would have popular
support and sympathy. It was obvious that the 26 July movement had the
support of the Cuban young people. It seemed that this time a great and
strong organization would take up the concerns of our people.

I think that everything went well for us from the very first, with
a single revolutionary organization — ours or any other, that of 36, 27 or
50, whichever. Because when all is said and done it was the same men,
those of us who fought in the Sierra Maestra or in the Hscambray or in
Pinar del Rio, and we were the same men, all of us supported a single ideal
and revolutionary organization. Ours was simply the first, that which
waged the first battle at the Moncada Barracks, that which disembarked from
the “Granma” in the month of December and which fought alone for more than
a year against the tyranny, when we had no more than 12 men holding high
the ban etc., until we came to show that this was not the struggle, that it
must be different. We had to invent tactics in so doing, and it was we who
had to lead the struggle effectively to the achievement of its ideal, and I
want the people to tell my honestly if this is or is not the truth.

There is,-moreover, another question. The 26 July Movement was a
majority movement. Isn’t this true? And how did the struggle end? When
the tyranny fell, we had taken all of Oriente, Camaguey, almost all of Las
Villas, Matanzas and Pinar del Rio. The struggle ended with the forces
which had reached Las Villas, because we rebels had in command Major Camilo
Cienfuegos and Major Guevara in Las Villas. On 1 January, because of
Cantillo’s betrayal, Camilo Cienfuegos had orders to advance on the capital
and attack Columbia, and Major Ernesto Guevara in Las Villas also had
orders to advance on the capital and seize La Cabana, and every military
fortress of any importance fell to the rebels. And finally, it was our
efforts, experience and organization which enabled us to win. Does this
mean that the others did not fight? No! Does this mean that the others
were not worthy? No! Because we all fought as the people fought. In
Havana there were no mountain battles, but hundreds were killed. In Havana
there were no mountain battles, but the general strike was a decisive
factor in making the triumph of the revolution complete.

In stating this, the only proper thing is to put things in their
place. The overall effect of the movement in the struggle was not here and
not there exclusively. It was the product of the joint efforts of all.
Someone should write an article entitled “Against Everything,” explaining
the strategy which this revolution developed and which culminated with the
26 July triumph and the overwhelming defeat of the tyrant’s forces, which
surrendered to the forces of the rebel Army. Not only did this serve the
ends of the 26 July forces, but it also taught how it is necessary to deal
with the enemy in war, because this was perhaps the first revolution in the
world in which no prisoner of war was murdered, no wounded soldier
abandoned, no man tortured, because this was the conduct maintained by the
Rebel Army, and, moreover, this was the only revolution in the world which
did not produce a single general. Not one, because the rank I took for
myself, which my comrades assigned me, was that of Major, and I have not
changed it, although we have won many battles. i still want to be a major.
And there was a moral result which promotions will not produce, because our
highest rank is that of major, although there are more than one can count.
To judge from appearances, I believe that the people approve of the way we
fought, and because I have fought as I have for citizens’ rights, I take
for myself the right to speak the truth even if it hurts, and also because
we are defending the interests of the fatherland, and will not compromise
with the threats which may hang over the Cuban revolution. Although others
have the same moral authority as I to speak, I would say that they
nonetheless have less merit, as I believe that for men to have equal
prerogatives, they must earn them in practice, against negative moral
conditions, they must prove worthy of merit. I believe that the revolution
has been completed, now that Major Cienfueges, after a month and several
days of battle, is in command in Columbia, now that Alnejeiras, who has
lost three brothers in this war, is chief of police and now that Major
Ernesto Guevara, who landed with the “Granma” and is a veteran of two years
and one month of battle in the highest and most rugged mountains of Cuba,
is in command of La cabana, and now that we have placed in charge of the
various regiments in the different provinces the men who have sacrificed
and fought the most in this revolution. If this is the case, no one has
the right to challenge them.

We must honor merit, because those who do not are but ambitious
creatures, those who do not honor the merits of others, who challenge them,
seek to deceive in order to assume their prerogatives.

Now the republic and the revolution are entering a new phase.
Would it be just for ambition or egotism to threaten the destiny of the
revolution here? What serves the interests of the people? Because it is
the people to whom it is of interest to avoid this danger. Our freedoms,
the rights they have won, peace, inner interest? Because currently the
people have all the freedoms, all the rights, and all the pace they have
wanted. Does an honest government serve the interests of the people? Is
it not an honest government which serves the interests of the people?
Well, today they have one. In the President of the Republic we have an
honorable official. Does honest and open army leadership serve the
interests of the people? Well, today they have it.

What is important to the people here is that their leaders be
honest men, not just anyone. What matters here is that those appointed
have these qualities, for haphazard appointees are not worth anything to
the people of Cuba. Has any of our appointees tried to cover the country
with blood?

Has any of our ministers covered the country with blood and
disturbed the peace of this nation?

If the team of leaders the present government has does not prove
worthy, the people have the right to out them, not to approve them, I mean
in elections, because when everyone knows that they are not worthy, this is
the final recourse: elections. We have finished forever here with coups
d’etat.

We must make this clear so that demagogy and confusion will not
arise, and with the first evidence of ambition to appear, we must be
merciless. Nor my part, I tell you that the only thing to heed is the
people, and the people have all the armed columns. This is because in
order to wage a free revolution we called upon the people, because by
talking with the people it is possible to avoid bloodshed and it is
necessary to call upon the people, so that they can help to resolve the
problems. I who have profound faith in the people and believe I have shown
this, tell you that the people want to be counted on this country, but for
public opinion to make itself felt, it is necessary to have extraordinary
strength. In an era of dictatorship, public opinion is nothing, but in an
era of freedom, it is everything and the official authorities must express
their views to the republic. They must speak to the people, because
always, by this means, by speaking wisely with the people, the revolution
can avoid many threats. And I tell you that these treats are not so great,
because it should not be necessary to shed more Cuban blood to consolidate
the revolution.

I must say that we are working to consolidate this revolution,
because otherwise it would not exist, nor would I have been speaking here
before this vast crowd.

I could not have spoken thus when we were a group of 12 men, when
all we had was the duty to fight, to struggle and to win merit in the eyes
of the people. But now that we have heavy guns, weapons, a navy and
tremendous strength of a military nature, and in the people, our great
concern must be not to fight, because there is no merit in fighting thus,
because to fight now with tanks, heavy guns, etc., has no merit. What I
ask of the people in order to combat all ambition is their cooperation in
condemning the ambitious, in order to eliminate any emerging ambition from
hereon. I am not going to make an attack of a personal and specific
nature, because the triumph is too recent to permit embarking on polemics.
However, when the time comes to do so, I am ready, because I have moral
authority enough to do this (applause). And this is because I believe in
the mass of the fighters, in the majority of the men, and I cite as an
example Carlos Prio Socarras, who told me that he wanted to contribute to
the revolution, without any personal aspirations, that is to say,
unconditionally, and he proved this by protesting not at all, by never
expressing the slightest objection or complaint to the cabinet. And I have
found the same readiness in other organizations — those of combatants, men
who fought and struggled, and the other organizations must have the feeling
of the free revolutionaries who have always thought of the welfare of the
people. And I am certain that if anyone were to come to combat civil
revolution in Cuba they should do so very carefully, because all they would
achieve would be the desertion of all the combatants from their ranks,
because they would not follow them. One would have to be mad to challenge
the reason, the right, the peace and the history of Cuba.

I say all this because I want to ask the people a question the
answer to which interests me greatly. Why are they amassing weapons
secretly now? Why are they smuggling weapons in currently? I tell you
that currently there are members of revolutionary organizations who are
stockpiling weapons and smuggling them. All of the rebel army weapons are
in the barracks, and no one has taken them home. They are in the barracks
under lock and key! This is true in Pinar del Rio, just as it is in
Havana, Matanzas, Camaguey and Oriente, because these weapons should now be
in the barracks. And I will give you this warning: I am prepared to do
whatever I have to do to resolve this problem with the help of public
opinion, and I want to count on the strength of the people alone to
safeguard the weapons. I suggest that these revolutionaries abandon the
false positions into which they are slipping and get back in tune with the
freedoms and peace of the people.

Weapons for what? To fight against whom? Against the
revolutionary government, which has popular support? Weapons for what? To
fight against the revolution? Is Urrutia the same as Batista? Now there
is no censorship, the press is free and you can be sure that censorship
will not be reestablished, ever. Today there is no torture, assassination
or dictatorship. Today there is only happiness.

All of the leaders are organizing their trade union organizations,
all of the rights of the citizens have been reestablished. Weapons! What
for? To blackmail the President of the Republic? To threaten peace? So
that we can watch gangsterism and daily skirmishes flourish? Weapons for
what? Well, I say to you that two days ago, members of a certain
organization entered the San Antonio barracks, which was under the command
of Camilo Cienfueges and myself, as commander-in-chief of the armed forces,
and took 500 machine guns and other weapons. And I honestly hope that they
have not decided to engage in any other provocation, because to violate
what has been achieved like this is knavery. If they were seeking
provocations, what they lacked was not guns but only men of the people to
support them.

Because the combatants with true ideals are capable of fixing the
responsibility for this deed with those who have none, and so we have
remained calm, and no one fears that we are going to become dictators. He
who does not have the people with him, he who is not in the right, has no
strength, and we have seen such human and total affection in the hearts of
the people because we have never acted in such a way as rudely to impose
ourselves where we were not wanted, because we have won and produced
something in waging this struggle against the people and we do not need
force because on the day that the people look with disfavor upon us — only
this — we will leave, because we regard this task as a sacrifice, not
pleasure. We are working honestly, because it will bring us nothing
personally, and the people will never see me granting privileges to anyone,
nor committing injustices, nor plundering nor abusing, because we regard
the exercise of authority as a sacrifice, and we believe that if it were
not thus, if it were not for the demonstration of affection received from
the people, the least we could do would be to withdraw and retire,
particularly since it is a duty, and if it were not for this duty, what I
would do would be to say goodbye and take with me the gift of the love
which I have won in the hearts of the people, and wait for them to call
upon me in the same words as they have done today.

The tasks which duty imposes upon us not represent a difficult
path full of dangers.

And there is also another reason force does not interest us,
because on the day someone rises up to use force here I will make bold to
call him an enemy. I will tell him to take that force, and again I would
depart, and they could see how long this lasted.

I believe that these are reasons enough to show everyone that …
The President of the Republic has appointed me commander-in-chief of all
the air, land and sea forces in the republic. This is not an honor I have
earned, because to me it represents a sacrifice, and so I am not proud or
thankful for it, and I want the people to tell me I should assume this
duty. I believe that if I created an army with only 12 men and if I
commanded a military force which never abandoned a wounded man, nor harmed
a prisoner, we are the men who should command the forces of the republic,
filling the armed institutes with men not a one of whom has ever struck,
tortured or killed a prisoner, and moreover, we can serve as a bridge
between the revolution and the military. Because these soldiers will have
the duty of continuing to belong to the armed forces, and I also say that
those who have murdered will never save anyone.

And this is the case because all of the revolutionary combatants
want to belong to the regular forces of the army of the republic, have a
right to do so, since… but there are other more important problems to
resolve. The doors will be open to all the revolutionary fighters, because
they have fought and produced good for the country. And if they have
confidence in the country, in the government, if the doors are open to all,
what reason is there to stock weapons? I want the people to tell me if
they want peace, or a kind of war. I want to be told if the people agree
that each has a right to his own private army, in order to promote discord,
if we can have peace in the republic this way.

And these are the problems I have sought to control, so that the
guns could disappear from the streets as soon as possible, because when we
are not confronted by the enemy, there is no need to fight anyone, and if
one day it is necessary to do so, because they come to oppose the
revolution, it will not be just a few who will fight, but all. No one has
a right to have a private army. These elements have been seen engaging in
suspicious maneuvers. Perhaps they have taken the pretext that I have been
appointed commander of the army, and they have talked of a political army.
Is this a political army? That which has the support of the people?

And I want to tell the people and the mothers of Cuba that I will
resolve all problems without shedding a drop of blood. I tell the mothers
that they will never, because of us, have to weep. I want to ask the
people, all responsible men, to help us to resolve these problems and when
we are threatened with an action… this is immoral. I say here, moreover,
that we will not access to these threats, because this would be to dishonor
the revolution and to compromise its success and consolidation. Let those
who are not members of the regular forces of the republic return the
weapons to the barracks, because there are more than enough weapons here
now, and it has been proven that weapons are only needed when one has to
defend the right and the people. They are not for committing misdeeds.

I want to tell the people that they can be sure that the laws will
be respected, because there is no egotism or partisanship here. However,
on the day the people order that weapons be taken up to guarantee their
law, their peace and their right, then these weapons which are under my
jurisdiction will be taken up again to fulfill their duty.

Let no one think that we will full into temptation, because we
have too great a responsibility to prevent the shedding of a single drop of
blood, so that we cannot allow ourselves to be corrupted or confuse the
issues of life. Thus, let no one fear, because when our patience is
exhausted, we will seek new patience, and when that is finished, we will
seek still further patience. And this must be the slogan of the men who
have weapons in hand, and power in their hands: they must never become so
exasperated as to take up weapons. They must resign themselves to all
sacrifices, except when there is an attempt to endanger the security of the
law and the rights of the people. But we will make use of the weapons when
the people so demand. What I want to do now is simply to warn the people
of this danger, so that this revolution, which has cost us so much, can be
kept pure and useful to the citizens.

It is true that all peoples, after such struggles, have had others
and yet more. This seems to be an exception, and would that it should even
more so, because there could be no one who wants the firing of a single
further shot here. I am proud of the discipline and the spirit of the
people because if something really excellent has been accomplished it is
the demonstration of their dignity and civic conscience. Sacrifice for
such a people is well worth it.

As of the present, the military battles have ended. Tomorrow we
will have another day of peace like all the rest. We have become
accustomed to war. For a long time, we did not know what peace was. But
we must learn to work to pay the rent, the electrical bills, etc. I know
that the young people are deeply imbued with the enthusiasm which will
change the republic. I am certain of it, and also of the fact that there
is a president who has the confidence of the people, because no danger
threatens. The position of the president is established, and has now been
recognized by almost all the nations in the world. Nothing can threaten
him, and he has the support of the people, our support and that of the
revolutionary forces. This is true support, support without revolution and
without danger. For us, this step is above suspicion because we have
fought without ambition and full of the greatest hopes, faith and without
the slightest doubt.

Thus, now we must work hard. For my part, I will do all I can to
the benefit of the country. And I with all of my comrades stand with the
President of the Republic and all the other Cubans. I hope that the
triumph of consolidation will not be long in being achieved.

I see an extraordinary spirit of cooperation in all sectors of the
people, among the journalists and in all the other sectors of the country.
We will make a tremendous advance. The Republic will be free of all petty
politicking, vice and gambling. And now it is the Republic which will
resolve all the problems… Because I am not a professional military man
or an army careerist. I was a military man as short a time as possible. I
am not going to engage in military war undertakings with neighboring
countries, because if it is desired to fire shots, I believe that there is
plenty of room here in Cuba to do so.

If we do not resolve all these problems it means an incomplete
revolution, because I believe that the basic problem of the Republic,
following the triumph, is work, and this is the way to resolve the
problems.

But this is not all, comrades. There are thousands of other
things. But as you can imagine, we are not going to deal with every
subject in a single evening. We are ending a long day. Although I am not
tired, tomorrow morning a day of work must be begun. I promised to attend
the program “With the Press” tonight and I see that it is 1:30 and I cannot
go. You will have other opportunities to hear me on the radio, in the
press, etc. Also we will meet in the schools, the neighborhoods and
everywhere, anyone can talk with me. The demands of all will be met.

The Council of Ministers is made up of great revolutionary
elements. The President of the Republic chose the Prime Minister, and when
he asked our cooperation, we granted it. As I have said previously, we
cannot do everything in one, two or three days. Moreover, I have told the
people during other ceremonies that they should not expect these ministers
to know how to be ministers. These are new tasks for them. We knew
nothing about war, either, nor did Che Cuevara know anything about
strategy, or anything like it. He knew nothing of military matters. Why?
Because he had not studied them. Possibly the same will be the case with
the ministers, but I am sure that within a month, they will know more than
enough. The most important thing is the desire they have to learn, to
serve the people, and to do their jobs well. How will they know how to do
this? Morality, honesty will teach them, because although there are no
sages here, there are indeed honest men. The majority of them are members
of the 26 July Movement, but if they do not serve the purpose, others, the
men of 27 or 28 July, will replace them. The 26 July veterans have a right
to try to serve the Republic. And this must be all for today. Really, I
have said all I wanted and if there is something else, I will leave it for
another time.

I realize now that what I have not said is that I believe that all
of the people of Havana are here today. The vast crowd gathered today,
this astonishing multitude, will be seen in photographs. And I believe
that the people have done too much, because this is more that we merit. I
believe that never again will we see a crowd such as this, although I am
sure that on such will gather again when we go to our grave, because we
want to merit the gathering of such a crowd, since we will never deceive
our people.eved that if indeed the sacrifices we were making
were very great and the struggle would be very long (and it only lasted two
years), they were for us but a step, two years of hard combat from the time
we began the struggle again with a handful of men until the time we reached
the capital of the republic — despite the sacrifices which lay ahead, I
was comforted by one idea, that the 26 July Movement would have popular
support and sympathy. It was obvious that the 26 July movement had the
support of the Cuban young people. It seemed that this time a great and
strong organization would take up the concerns of our people.

I think that everything went well for us from the very first, with
a single revolutionary organization — ours or any other, that of 36, 27 or
50, whichever. Because when all is said and done it was the same men,
those of us who fought in the Sierra Maestra or in the Hscambray or in
Pinar del Rio, and we were the same men, all of us supported a single ideal
and revolutionary organization. Ours was simply the first, that which
waged the first battle at the Moncada Barracks, that which disembarked from
the “Granma” in the month of December and which fought alone for more than
a year against the tyranny, when we had no more than 12 men holding high
the ban etc., until we came to show that this was not the struggle, that it
must be different. We had to invent tactics in so doing, and it was we who
had to lead the struggle effectively to the achievement of its ideal, and I
want the people to tell my honestly if this is or is not the truth.

There is,-moreover, another question. The 26 July Movement was a
majority movement. Isn’t this true? And how did the struggle end? When
the tyranny fell, we had taken all of Oriente, Camaguey, almost all of Las
Villas, Matanzas and Pinar del Rio. The struggle ended with the forces
which had reached Las Villas, because we rebels had in command Major Camilo
Cienfuegos and Major Guevara in Las Villas. On 1 January, because of
Cantillo’s betrayal, Camilo Cienfuegos had orders to advance on the capital
and attack Columbia, and Major Ernesto Guevara in Las Villas also had
orders to advance on the capital and seize La Cabana, and every military
fortress of any importance fell to the rebels. And finally, it was our
efforts, experience and organization which enabled us to win. Does this
mean that the others did not fight? No! Does this mean that the others
were not worthy? No! Because we all fought as the people fought. In
Havana there were no mountain battles, but hundreds were killed. In Havana
there were no mountain battles, but the general strike was a decisive
factor in making the triumph of the revolution complete.

In stating this, the only proper thing is to put things in their
place. The overall effect of the movement in the struggle was not here and
not there exclusively. It was the product of the joint efforts of all.
Someone should write an article entitled “Against Everything,” explaining
the strategy which this revolution developed and which culminated with the
26 July triumph and the overwhelming defeat of the tyrant’s forces, which
surrendered to the forces of the rebel Army. Not only did this serve the
ends of the 26 July forces, but it also taught how it is necessary to deal
with the enemy in war, because this was perhaps the first revolution in the
world in which no prisoner of war was murdered, no wounded soldier
abandoned, no man tortured, because this was the conduct maintained by the
Rebel Army, and, moreover, this was the only revolution in the world which
did not produce a single general. Not one, because the rank I took for
myself, which my comrades assigned me, was that of Major, and I have not
changed it, although we have won many battles. i still want to be a major.
And there was a moral result which promotions will not produce, because our
highest rank is that of major, although there are more than one can count.
To judge from appearances, I believe that the people approve of the way we
fought, and because I have fought as I have for citizens’ rights, I take
for myself the right to speak the truth even if it hurts, and also because
we are defending the interests of the fatherland, and will not compromise
with the threats which may hang over the Cuban revolution. Although others
have the same moral authority as I to speak, I would say that they
nonetheless have less merit, as I believe that for men to have equal
prerogatives, they must earn them in practice, against negative moral
conditions, they must prove worthy of merit. I believe that the revolution
has been completed, now that Major Cienfueges, after a month and several
days of battle, is in command in Columbia, now that Alnejeiras, who has
lost three brothers in this war, is chief of police and now that Major
Ernesto Guevara, who landed with the “Granma” and is a veteran of two years
and one month of battle in the highest and most rugged mountains of Cuba,
is in command of La cabana, and now that we have placed in charge of the
various regiments in the different provinces the men who have sacrificed
and fought the most in this revolution. If this is the case, no one has
the right to challenge them.

We must honor merit, because those who do not are but ambitious
creatures, those who do not honor the merits of others, who challenge them,
seek to deceive in order to assume their prerogatives.

Now the republic and the revolution are entering a new phase.
Would it be just for ambition or egotism to threaten the destiny of the
revolution here? What serves the interests of the people? Because it is
the people to whom it is of interest to avoid this danger. Our freedoms,
the rights they have won, peace, inner interest? Because currently the
people have all the freedoms, all the rights, and all the pace they have
wanted. Does an honest government serve the interests of the people? Is
it not an honest government which serves the interests of the people?
Well, today they have one. In the President of the Republic we have an
honorable official. Does honest and open army leadership serve the
interests of the people? Well, today they have it.

What is important to the people here is that their leaders be
honest men, not just anyone. What matters here is that those appointed
have these qualities, for haphazard appointees are not worth anything to
the people of Cuba. Has any of our appointees tried to cover the country
with blood?

Has any of our ministers covered the country with blood and
disturbed the peace of this nation?

If the team of leaders the present government has does not prove
worthy, the people have the right to out them, not to approve them, I mean
in elections, because when everyone knows that they are not worthy, this is
the final recourse: elections. We have finished forever here with coups
d’etat.

We must make this clear so that demagogy and confusion will not
arise, and with the first evidence of ambition to appear, we must be
merciless. Nor my part, I tell you that the only thing to heed is the
people, and the people have all the armed columns. This is because in
order to wage a free revolution we called upon the people, because by
talking with the people it is possible to avoid bloodshed and it is
necessary to call upon the people, so that they can help to resolve the
problems. I who have profound faith in the people and believe I have shown
this, tell you that the people want to be counted on this country, but for
public opinion to make itself felt, it is necessary to have extraordinary
strength. In an era of dictatorship, public opinion is nothing, but in an
era of freedom, it is everything and the official authorities must express
their views to the republic. They must speak to the people, because
always, by this means, by speaking wisely with the people, the revolution
can avoid many threats. And I tell you that these treats are not so great,
because it should not be necessary to shed more Cuban blood to consolidate
the revolution.

I must say that we are working to consolidate this revolution,
because otherwise it would not exist, nor would I have been speaking here
before this vast crowd.

I could not have spoken thus when we were a group of 12 men, when
all we had was the duty to fight, to struggle and to win merit in the eyes
of the people. But now that we have heavy guns, weapons, a navy and
tremendous strength of a military nature, and in the people, our great
concern must be not to fight, because there is no merit in fighting thus,
because to fight now with tanks, heavy guns, etc., has no merit. What I
ask of the people in order to combat all ambition is their cooperation in
condemning the ambitious, in order to eliminate any emerging ambition from
hereon. I am not going to make an attack of a personal and specific
nature, because the triumph is too recent to permit embarking on polemics.
However, when the time comes to do so, I am ready, because I have moral
authority enough to do this (applause). And this is because I believe in
the mass of the fighters, in the majority of the men, and I cite as an
example Carlos Prio Socarras, who told me that he wanted to contribute to
the revolution, without any personal aspirations, that is to say,
unconditionally, and he proved this by protesting not at all, by never
expressing the slightest objection or complaint to the cabinet. And I have
found the same readiness in other organizations — those of combatants, men
who fought and struggled, and the other organizations must have the feeling
of the free revolutionaries who have always thought of the welfare of the
people. And I am certain that if anyone were to come to combat civil
revolution in Cuba they should do so very carefully, because all they would
achieve would be the desertion of all the combatants from their ranks,
because they would not follow them. One would have to be mad to challenge
the reason, the right, the peace and the history of Cuba.

I say all this because I want to ask the people a question the
answer to which interests me greatly. Why are they amassing weapons
secretly now? Why are they smuggling weapons in currently? I tell you
that currently there are members of revolutionary organizations who are
stockpiling weapons and smuggling them. All of the rebel army weapons are
in the barracks, and no one has taken them home. They are in the barracks
under lock and key! This is true in Pinar del Rio, just as it is in
Havana, Matanzas, Camaguey and Oriente, because these weapons should now be
in the barracks. And I will give you this warning: I am prepared to do
whatever I have to do to resolve this problem with the help of public
opinion, and I want to count on the strength of the people alone to
safeguard the weapons. I suggest that these revolutionaries abandon the
false positions into which they are slipping and get back in tune with the
freedoms and peace of the people.

Weapons for what? To fight against whom? Against the
revolutionary government, which has popular support? Weapons for what? To
fight against the revolution? Is Urrutia the same as Batista? Now there
is no censorship, the press is free and you can be sure that censorship
will not be reestablished, ever. Today there is no torture, assassination
or dictatorship. Today there is only happiness.

All of the leaders are organizing their trade union organizations,
all of the rights of the citizens have been reestablished. Weapons! What
for? To blackmail the President of the Republic? To threaten peace? So
that we can watch gangsterism and daily skirmishes flourish? Weapons for
what? Well, I say to you that two days ago, members of a certain
organization entered the San Antonio barracks, which was under the command
of Camilo Cienfueges and myself, as commander-in-chief of the armed forces,
and took 500 machine guns and other weapons. And I honestly hope that they
have not decided to engage in any other provocation, because to violate
what has been achieved like this is knavery. If they were seeking
provocations, what they lacked was not guns but only men of the people to
support them.

Because the combatants with true ideals are capable of fixing the
responsibility for this deed with those who have none, and so we have
remained calm, and no one fears that we are going to become dictators. He
who does not have the people with him, he who is not in the right, has no
strength, and we have seen such human and total affection in the hearts of
the people because we have never acted in such a way as rudely to impose
ourselves where we were not wanted, because we have won and produced
something in waging this struggle against the people and we do not need
force because on the day that the people look with disfavor upon us — only
this — we will leave, because we regard this task as a sacrifice, not
pleasure. We are working honestly, because it will bring us nothing
personally, and the people will never see me granting privileges to anyone,
nor committing injustices, nor plundering nor abusing, because we regard
the exercise of authority as a sacrifice, and we believe that if it were
not thus, if it were not for the demonstration of affection received from
the people, the least we could do would be to withdraw and retire,
particularly since it is a duty, and if it were not for this duty, what I
would do would be to say goodbye and take with me the gift of the love
which I have won in the hearts of the people, and wait for them to call
upon me in the same words as they have done today.

The tasks which duty imposes upon us not represent a difficult
path full of dangers.

And there is also another reason force does not interest us,
because on the day someone rises up to use force here I will make bold to
call him an enemy. I will tell him to take that force, and again I would
depart, and they could see how long this lasted.

I believe that these are reasons enough to show everyone that …
The President of the Republic has appointed me commander-in-chief of all
the air, land and sea forces in the republic. This is not an honor I have
earned, because to me it represents a sacrifice, and so I am not proud or
thankful for it, and I want the people to tell me I should assume this
duty. I believe that if I created an army with only 12 men and if I
commanded a military force which never abandoned a wounded man, nor harmed
a prisoner, we are the men who should command the forces of the republic,
filling the armed institutes with men not a one of whom has ever struck,
tortured or killed a prisoner, and moreover, we can serve as a bridge
between the revolution and the military. Because these soldiers will have
the duty of continuing to belong to the armed forces, and I also say that
those who have murdered will never save anyone.

And this is the case because all of the revolutionary combatants
want to belong to the regular forces of the army of the republic, have a
right to do so, since… but there are other more important problems to
resolve. The doors will be open to all the revolutionary fighters, because
they have fought and produced good for the country. And if they have
confidence in the country, in the government, if the doors are open to all,
what reason is there to stock weapons? I want the people to tell me if
they want peace, or a kind of war. I want to be told if the people agree
that each has a right to his own private army, in order to promote discord,
if we can have peace in the republic this way.

And these are the problems I have sought to control, so that the
guns could disappear from the streets as soon as possible, because when we
are not confronted by the enemy, there is no need to fight anyone, and if
one day it is necessary to do so, because they come to oppose the
revolution, it will not be just a few who will fight, but all. No one has
a right to have a private army. These elements have been seen engaging in
suspicious maneuvers. Perhaps they have taken the pretext that I have been
appointed commander of the army, and they have talked of a political army.
Is this a political army? That which has the support of the people?

And I want to tell the people and the mothers of Cuba that I will
resolve all problems without shedding a drop of blood. I tell the mothers
that they will never, because of us, have to weep. I want to ask the
people, all responsible men, to help us to resolve these problems and when
we are threatened with an action… this is immoral. I say here, moreover,
that we will not access to these threats, because this would be to dishonor
the revolution and to compromise its success and consolidation. Let those
who are not members of the regular forces of the republic return the
weapons to the barracks, because there are more than enough weapons here
now, and it has been proven that weapons are only needed when one has to
defend the right and the people. They are not for committing misdeeds.

I want to tell the people that they can be sure that the laws will
be respected, because there is no egotism or partisanship here. However,
on the day the people order that weapons be taken up to guarantee their
law, their peace and their right, then these weapons which are under my
jurisdiction will be taken up again to fulfill their duty.

Let no one think that we will full into temptation, because we
have too great a responsibility to prevent the shedding of a single drop of
blood, so that we cannot allow ourselves to be corrupted or confuse the
issues of life. Thus, let no one fear, because when our patience is
exhausted, we will seek new patience, and when that is finished, we will
seek still further patience. And this must be the slogan of the men who
have weapons in hand, and power in their hands: they must never become so
exasperated as to take up weapons. They must resign themselves to all
sacrifices, except when there is an attempt to endanger the security of the
law and the rights of the people. But we will make use of the weapons when
the people so demand. What I want to do now is simply to warn the people
of this danger, so that this revolution, which has cost us so much, can be
kept pure and useful to the citizens.

It is true that all peoples, after such struggles, have had others
and yet more. This seems to be an exception, and would that it should even
more so, because there could be no one who wants the firing of a single
further shot here. I am proud of the discipline and the spirit of the
people because if something really excellent has been accomplished it is
the demonstration of their dignity and civic conscience. Sacrifice for
such a people is well worth it.

As of the present, the military battles have ended. Tomorrow we
will have another day of peace like all the rest. We have become
accustomed to war. For a long time, we did not know what peace was. But
we must learn to work to pay the rent, the electrical bills, etc. I know
that the young people are deeply imbued with the enthusiasm which will
change the republic. I am certain of it, and also of the fact that there
is a president who has the confidence of the people, because no danger
threatens. The position of the president is established, and has now been
recognized by almost all the nations in the world. Nothing can threaten
him, and he has the support of the people, our support and that of the
revolutionary forces. This is true support, support without revolution and
without danger. For us, this step is above suspicion because we have
fought without ambition and full of the greatest hopes, faith and without
the slightest doubt.

Thus, now we must work hard. For my part, I will do all I can to
the benefit of the country. And I with all of my comrades stand with the
President of the Republic and all the other Cubans. I hope that the
triumph of consolidation will not be long in being achieved.

I see an extraordinary spirit of cooperation in all sectors of the
people, among the journalists and in all the other sectors of the country.
We will make a tremendous advance. The Republic will be free of all petty
politicking, vice and gambling. And now it is the Republic which will
resolve all the problems… Because I am not a professional military man
or an army careerist. I was a military man as short a time as possible. I
am not going to engage in military war undertakings with neighboring
countries, because if it is desired to fire shots, I believe that there is
plenty of room here in Cuba to do so.

If we do not resolve all these problems it means an incomplete
revolution, because I believe that the basic problem of the Republic,
following the triumph, is work, and this is the way to resolve the
problems.

But this is not all, comrades. There are thousands of other
things. But as you can imagine, we are not going to deal with every
subject in a single evening. We are ending a long day. Although I am not
tired, tomorrow morning a day of work must be begun. I promised to attend
the program “With the Press” tonight and I see that it is 1:30 and I cannot
go. You will have other opportunities to hear me on the radio, in the
press, etc. Also we will meet in the schools, the neighborhoods and
everywhere, anyone can talk with me. The demands of all will be met.

The Council of Ministers is made up of great revolutionary
elements. The President of the Republic chose the Prime Minister, and when
he asked our cooperation, we granted it. As I have said previously, we
cannot do everything in one, two or three days. Moreover, I have told the
people during other ceremonies that they should not expect these ministers
to know how to be ministers. These are new tasks for them. We knew
nothing about war, either, nor did Che Cuevara know anything about
strategy, or anything like it. He knew nothing of military matters. Why?
Because he had not studied them. Possibly the same will be the case with
the ministers, but I am sure that within a month, they will know more than
enough. The most important thing is the desire they have to learn, to
serve the people, and to do their jobs well. How will they know how to do
this? Morality, honesty will teach them, because although there are no
sages here, there are indeed honest men. The majority of them are members
of the 26 July Movement, but if they do not serve the purpose, others, the
men of 27 or 28 July, will replace them. The 26 July veterans have a right
to try to serve the Republic. And this must be all for today. Really, I
have said all I wanted and if there is something else, I will leave it for
another time.

I realize now that what I have not said is that I believe that all
of the people of Havana are here today. The vast crowd gathered today,
this astonishing multitude, will be seen in photographs. And I believe
that the people have done too much, because this is more that we merit. I
believe that never again will we see a crowd such as this, although I am
sure that on such will gather again when we go to our grave, because we
want to merit the gathering of such a crowd, since we will never deceive
our people.

“The Kharkov comrades, with the heroic personality of Olga Taratuta at their head, had all served the Revolution, fought on its fronts, endured punishment from the Whites, persecution and imprisonment by the Bolsheviki. Nothing had daunted their revolutionary ardour and anarchist faith.” Living My Life, Emma Goldman

Elka Ruvinskaia was born in the village of Novodmitrovka near Kherson in the Ukraine on the 21st January 1876 ( or possibly 1874 or 1878). Her family was Jewish and her father ran a small shop. After her studies she worked as a teacher. She was arrested for “political suspicion” in 1895. In 1897 she joined a Social Democrat group around the brothers A. and I. Grossman (who later became anarchists) in Elizavetgrad, and distributed their propaganda. In 1898-1901 she was a member of the Elizavetgrad committee of the Social-Democratic Party and the South Russian Union of Workers. In 1901 she fled abroad, living in Germany and Switzerland where she met Lenin and Plekhanov and worked for the paper Iskra.
In 1903 In Switzerland she became an anarchist-communist. In 1904 she returned to Odessa and joined the group Without Compromise which was made up of anarchists and disciples of the Polish socialist Machajski. She was arrested in April1904 and in the autumn was freed for lack of evidence. She then joined the Odessa Workers Group of Anarchist Communists which distributed propaganda and organised workers’ circles. She began to acquire a reputation as one of the most outstanding anarchists in Russia. She used the pseudonym Babushka (Granny) – a strange alias considering she was still only around thirty!
At the beginning of October 1905 she was arrested again but was again released with the October amnesty. She joined the Battle Detachment of the South Russian Group of Anarchist Communists which used the tactic of “motiveless terror”- that is attacks on institutions and representatives of the autocratic regime rather than particular targeted individuals . She helped prepare the notorious attack on the Libman café in December 1905. She was arrested and sentenced to17 years imprisonment in 1906 She escaped from prison on 15th December and fled to Moscow. In December 1906 she joined the Moscow anarchist-communist organisation Buntar (Rebel) and agitated in the workplaces. After the arrest of group members in March 1907 she and some others fled to Switzerland where they edited a paper of the same name.
In autumn 1907 Olga returned to Ekaterinoslav and Kiev and after moved on to Odessa. She prepared an attentat against general A.V.Kaulbars, the commander of the Odessa military region, and against general Tolmachov governor of Odessa and an explosion at the Odessa tribunal.
At the end of February 1908 she went to Kiev to prepare the blowing up of the prison walls of Lukianovka prison and organise the escape of arrested anarchists there. However all other members of the group were rounded up but Olga managed to flee. She was arrested at Ekaterinoslav and at the end of 1909 sentenced to 21 years imprisonment. She was freed from Lukianovka prison in March 1917. As Paul Avrich says in his book The Russian Anarchists she was now “a tired and subdued woman in her late forties,” at first keeping her distance from the movement. In May 1918 she organised the Political Red Cross in Kiev, which help imprisoned revolutionaries regardless of their political affiliations, and which once even helped Bolsheviks. By now her old revolutionary zeal had returned, fired by her rising indignation at how anarchist revolutionaries were being treated by the Bolsheviks. In 1919 she moved to Moscow. In June 1920 she took part in the organisation of Golos Truda (Voice of Labour) At the end of September 1920 after the signing of the pact between the Soviet government and the Makhnovists she returned to the Ukraine. In Gulyai Polye she was given 5 million roubles by the Makhnovist commanders. With this money she went to Kharkov and set up the Anarchist Black Cross which helped imprisoned and repressed anarchists. In November Olga was elected as representative of the Makhnovists in Kharkov and Moscow.
During the wave of repression against anarchists and Makhnovists in the Ukraine, Olga was arrested. The Black Cross was closed down and its centre destroyed. In January 1921 she was transported to Moscow with 40 other Ukrainian anarchists. She was one of the imprisoned anarchists allowed to attend the funeral of Kropotkin by the Bolsheviks. At the end of April 1921 she was transferred to Orlov prison. In May 1921 the Soviet Attorney General proposed to Olga that she could be released if she recanted her ideas in public. In summer 1921 she joined the 11-day hunger strike of arrested anarchists. In March 1922 she was exiled for 2 years to Velikii Ustiug.
Freed at the beginning of 1924 she moved to Kiev. She ceased all activity but kept in personal contact with various anarchists. Mid-1924 she was arrested for making anarchist propaganda, but was soon released. In 1924 she moved to Moscow. In 1927 she supported the campaign for Sacco and Vanzetti (see Nikolai Rogdaev here at libcom). In 1928-1929 she wrote many letters on the need to organise an international campaign for anarchists imprisoned in the Soviet Union. In 1929 she moved to Odessa where she was arrested for trying to create anarchist cells among the rail-workers. ( During this period in the 20s she was involved with the Odessa anarchists in the illegal smuggling of anarchist literature into the USSR). She got a term of 2 years in the “polit-isolator”.She was freed in 1931 and returned to Moscow. She became a member of the Society of ex- political prisoners and exiles which attempted to get pensions for old, impoverished and sick revolutionaries, but without success. In 1933 she was re-arrested and sentenced but documents for this no longer exist. In 1937 she was living in Moscow and worked in a metal processing factory as a driller.
She was re-arrested on 27th November 1937, and accused of anarchist and counter-Soviet activity. On 8th February 1938 Olga was condemned to death by the Chief Tribunal of the Soviet Union. She was executed on the same day.
Sources:
The Russian Anarchists by Paul Avrich
Living My Life by Emma Goldman

I have few personal recollections of Georgii Valentinovich. Our meetings were infrequent, although they were not devoid of significance, and I gladly record my memories of him.

In 1893 I left Russia for Zurich, as I felt that I could only acquire the education I needed by going abroad. My friends the Lindfors gave me a letter of introduction to Pavel Alexandrovich Axelrod.

Axelrod and his family received me with delightful hospitality. By then I was a more or less convinced Marxist and considered myself a member of the Social Democratic party (I was eighteen and had begun work as an agitator and propagandist two years before going abroad). I am very much indebted to Axelrod for my education in socialism and, however far apart he and I may have moved subsequently, I look upon him with gratitude as one of my most influential teachers. Axelrod was full of awe and reverence for Plekhanov and spoke of him with adoration. This, added to the impression of brilliance that I had already gained from reading Our Differences and various other articles by Plekhanov, filled me with an uneasy, disturbing sense of expectation at the prospect of meeting this great man.

At last Plekhanov came from Geneva to Zurich, brought there by a dispute among the Polish socialists on the nationality question. The nationally-minded socialists in Zurich were headed by Jodko. Our future comrades were led by Rosa Luxemburg, then a brilliant student at Zurich University. Plekhanov was to pronounce on the conflict. For some reason his train was late, so that my first sight of Plekhanov was destined to be slightly theatrical. The meeting had already begun; with rather wearisome emphasis Jodko had been defending his viewpoint for half an hour when into the Eintracht Hall strode Plekhanov.

That was twenty-eight years ago. Plekhanov must have been slightly over thirty. He was a well-proportioned rather slim man in an impeccable frock coat, with a handsome face made particularly striking by his brilliant eyes and – his most marked feature – by thick, shaggy eyebrows. Later at the Stuttgart Congress one newspaper spoke of Plekhanov as ‘eine aristokratische Erscheinung’. Indeed in Plekhanov’s appearance, in his diction, his tone of voice and his whole bearing there was the ineradicable stamp of the gentry – he was a gentleman from head to toe. This was apt to offend some people’s proletarian instincts, but when one remembered that this gentleman was an extreme revolutionary and one of the pioneers of the workers’ movement, Plekhanov’s aristocratic air became something impressive and moving: ‘Look what sort of people are on our side.’

I have no intention of writing a character-study of Plekhanov – that is a task for another occasion – but I would note in passing that in Plekhanov’s very appearance and manner something made me, a young man, involuntarily think: Herzen must have been like that.

Plekhanov sat down at Axelrod’s table, where I was also sitting, but we exchanged no more than a few sentences.

Plekhanov’s speech itself rather disappointed me, perhaps by contrast with Rosa’s speech which was as sharp as a razor-blade and as brilliant as silver. When the loud applause for her speech had died down, old Greulich, even then gray-haired, even then looking like Abraham (I saw him, by the way, twenty-five years later looking almost as lively as he had on that occasion although, alas, by then neither he nor Plekhanov were progressive socialists) mounted the rostrum and said in a specially solemn tone: ‘Now comrade Plekhanov will speak. He will speak in French. His speech will be translated but, my friends, please try and maintain absolute silence and follow his speech with attention.’

This appeal by the chairman for reverential silence and the huge ovation with which Georgii Valentinovich was greeted combined to move me to tears. A mere youth, which made it pardonable, I was extremely proud of my great fellow-countryman. But his speech, I repeat, rather disappointed me.

For political reasons Plekhanov wanted to adopt a midway position. As a Russian he obviously found it awkward to speak out against the Polish national spirit, although he was theoretically wholly on Rosa Luxemburg’s side. At all events he emerged from this difficult situation with honour and with great skill, playing the part of the wise conciliator.

Georgii Valentinovich then stayed for several more days in Zurich and at the risk of seeming rude I lingered whole days at the Axelrods’ to seize every possible chance of talking to him.

The opportunities were numerous. Plekhanov loved talking. I was a boy who was well-read, not unintelligent and extremely eager. In spite of my awe of Plekhanov I got on my high horse and, as it were, invited combat on various philosophical questions. Plekhanov liked this; sometimes he would deal playfully with me like a big dog with a puppy and would knock me on my back with an unexpected swipe of his great paw, sometimes he grew angry and sometimes he would expound his views with great earnestness.

Plekhanov was an absolutely incomparable conversationalist in the brilliance of his wit, the wealth of his knowledge, the ease with which he could mobilize the most enormous concentration of mental power on any subject. The Germans have a word ‘geistreich’ – rich of mind. It exactly describes Plekhanov.

I should mention that Plekhanov did not shake my faith in the great significance of ‘left realism’, i.e. Avenarius’s philosophy. He said jokingly to me: ‘Let’s talk about Kant instead, if you really want to flounder about in the theory of knowledge – he at least was a man.’ Although Plekhanov was capable of dealing an intellectual knock-out blow on occasions, he was also prone to strike off-target.

However, these talks had an immeasurably great influence on me when Plekhanov dwelt on the great Idealist philosophers Fichte, Schellingb and Hegel.

Naturally I was already well aware of the enormous significance of Hegel in the history of socialism and of the impossibility of having a proper grasp of the Marxist philosophy of history without a sound acquaintance with Hegel.

Later Plekhanov was to accuse me in one of our public disputes of not having studied Hegel properly. Partly thanks to Plekhanov I had in fact read Hegel with some thoroughness, but I would have done so in any case, as befitted an aspiring socialist theoretician. Fichte and Schelling were another matter. I thought it quite adequate to have read about them in histories of philosophy, considering them to be a dead letter and not worth studying. Plekhanov, however, spoke of them with unexpected enthusiasm. Without for a moment relapsing into any heresy such as ‘Back to Fichte!’ (later proclaimed by Struve), he nevertheless held forth to me in such a fervent, glorious paean to Fichte and Schelling as the architects of a monumental philosophical edifice that I immediately ran to the Zurich national library and plunged into reading the works of those great Idealists, who were to leave such a stamp not only on my whole philosophical outlook but indeed on my entire personality.

It is a great shame that Plekhanov did no more than touch on the Idealist philosophers. He knew them exhaustively, indeed with astonishing exactitude, and could have written a book on them which would certainly have been no less brilliant than his book on the materialist precursors of Marxism. It is true, I think, that in Plekhanov’s undoubtedly rather Bazarov-like mind, of the forerunners of Marxism his favourites d’Holbach and Helvetius were dearer to him than the Idealists. But anyone who imagined that he ignored that other great root of Marxism would be doing Plekhanov an injustice.

Georgii Valentinovich suggested that I should visit him to continue our talks; but it was a year or so before I was able to go to Geneva from Paris. Those, too, were happy days. Georgii Valentinovich was then writing his foreword to the Communist Manifesto and had become very interested in art. I had always been passionately interested in it and consequently the chief theme of our talks was the dependence of the cultural superstructure on the economic base of society, especially where art was concerned. I used to meet him in his study in the rue de Candole and sometimes in the Cafe Landolt where we would spend hours over many a mug of beer.

I remember one incident which made a tremendous impression on me. Plekhanov was pacing up and down his study explaining something. Suddenly he walked over to a cupboard, took out a large album, laid it on the table in front of me and opened it. It contained some wonderful engravings by Boucher, extremely frivolous and – by my standards of those days – almost pornographic; I at once said something to that effect, that here was a typical indication of the decadence of a ruling class on the eve of revolution.

‘Yes,’ said Plekhanov, looking at me with his glittering eyes, ‘but look how superb they are – what style, what life, what elegance, what sensuality.’

I shall not attempt to record the rest of the conversation – it would mean writing a minor treatise on rococo art. I can only say that Plekhanov more or less anticipated all of Hausenstein’s main conclusions, although I do not recall him telling me exactly whether or not Boucher’s art was fundamentally a bourgeois art that had been merely transplanted into a framework of court life.

To me his aesthetic perception was astounding – his powers of judgement on matters of art were wide-ranging and unprejudiced. Plekhanov’s taste was, I think, infallible. On any work of art that he disliked he could express himself in two words, with an absolutely lethal irony which totally disarmed you if you happened to disagree with him. About works of art which pleased him Plekhanov spoke with such precision, at times with such excitement that it became obvious why he was an influential writer on the history of art. His relatively modest studies, dealing only with a few periods, have become one of the cornerstones of subsequent work in that field.

From no book, from no museum, have I ever gained so much stimulation and insight as from those talks of mine with Georgii Valentinovich.

Unfortunately our subsequent meetings took place in rather less happy circumstances, where we encountered each other as political enemies.

I did not meet Plekhanov again until the Stuttgart Congress. The Bolshevik delegation had appointed me their official representative on the very important committee set up to work out the Party’s policy towards the trades unions. Plekhanov represented the Mensheviks. At the very start a dispute arose within the Russian delegation. The majority voted for our viewpoint and the waverers eventually swung over to our side. The matter was in no sense a personal victory of mine over Plekhanov: he defended his thesis brilliantly, but the thesis itself was unacceptable. Plekhanov insisted that close alliance between the Party and the trades unions might be detrimental to the Party, that the task of the trades unions was to improve the workers’ lot within the capitalist system whereas the Party’s task was to destroy that system itself. He advocated independence. The opposing tendency was headed by the Belgian De Brouckere. (De Brouckere was then a very left-wing socialist whose thinking had much in common with ours, although he was later to deviate.) De Brouckere stood for the need to penetrate the trade-union movement with a socialist consciousness of the indissoluble unity of the working class, the guiding role of the Party and so on. In the reigning atmosphere of heated discussion of the general strike as a fighting weapon, everyone was tending to reconsider their previous views. We were all aware that parliamentarism was becoming a more and more inadequate weapon, that without the trades unions the Party would never accomplish the revolution and that after the revolution the trades unions were bound to play a major part in rebuilding a new world. As a result, Plekhanov’s attitude, represented at the international level by Guesde, was ultimately rejected both by our committee and by the Congress itself.

To my surprise I detected a certain trace of the ‘Old Believer’ in Plekhanov’s political attitudes. For the first time his orthodoxy seemed slightly ossified and it occurred to me that politics were far from being Plekhanov’s strong suit. One might have deduced this in any case from the way in which he wavered between one and the other of the Party’s two main factions.

We next met at the Stockholm Congress, where this characteristic behaviour of Plekhanov’s became all too evident. He was far from being a convinced Menshevik at this congress. In part his aim was conciliationist. He stood for Party unity (this was, after all, the ‘Unification’ congress) and maintained that if revolutionary feeling were to increase in Russia the Mensheviks would find no allies except from the ranks of the Bolsheviks. On the other hand he was frightened by the rigidity of the Bolsheviks’ position. In his opinion Bolshevism was not orthodox. Indeed the main feature which differentiated the two factions at that time was their policy on the peasantry.

The scheme of the revolution as the Mensheviks envisaged it was as follows: a bourgeois revolution was in progress in Russia, which would culminate in a constitutional monarchy, or at best in a bourgeois republic. The working class should support the protagonists of this capitalist revolution, simultaneously wresting from them positions of advantage for their future task of opposition and – ultimately – of revolution. It was assumed that there would be a considerable time-lag between the bourgeois revolution and the socialist revolution.

Comrade Trotsky held the view that both revolutions, although they might not coincide, were so inter-connected that we would face a situation of ‘permanent revolution’. Starting with a seizure of power by bourgeois political forces, the Russian people would enter a revolutionary period; along with it the rest of the world, too, would not emerge from this period until the total completion of the social revolution. It is undeniable that in formulating these views comrade Trotsky showed great prescience, although his timing was wrong by fifteen years.

Incidentally I should point out that in a leading article in New Life I also outlined the possibility of a seizure of power by the proletariat and of the retention, under proletarian control, of a form of capitalism which would rapidly evolve towards socialism. I described a situation remarkably similar to our present NEP, but I was given a telling-off by L.B. Krasin who found my article ill-advised and un-Marxist.

The Bolsheviks, with comrade Lenin at their head, were in fact extremely cautious; they held that there were no signs of the proletarian social revolution having begun, but they thought that this revolution had to be encouraged as much as possible without engaging in any theoretical guesswork and prediction, which were foreign to Vladimir Ilyich’s nature. In practical terms the Bolsheviks advanced confidently along the correct path. To bring about a plebeian revolution, a revolution similar to the French Revolution that could be taken even further than ’93, an alliance with the bourgeoisie was useless: consequently our tactics demanded a break with the bourgeoisie. But we had no intention of isolating the proletariat, for whom we envisaged the enormous task of organizing an alliance with the peasantry, above all with the poor peasantry. Plekhanov was incapable of understanding this. Addressing Lenin he said: ‘This new idea of yours sounds a pretty ancient one to me!’ Why ‘ancient’? Because it seemed to be borrowing the worn-out policy of the SRs and to cause us to abandon our characteristic emphasis on the proletariat.

Plekhanov’s failure to comprehend our standpoint should not be lightly dismissed as being no more than a typical example of his blinkered super-orthodoxy. Were we not, in the course of our great revolution, once obliged to include some SRs, even if left SRs, in our government, and was this move entirely free of danger ? Are we not delighted now that the childish policies of the left SRs themselves have caused their severance from the government? The fears of a ‘peasantization’ of the Soviet government, of which comrades Shlyapnikov, Kollontai and others occasionally warn us, are unfounded, but the soil which nourishes them is clear to everybody. At the moment it is impossible to say with absolute certainty how a joint workers’ and peasants’ government will succeed, although everything appears to support comrade Lenin’s predictions at the Party Congress that the huge deadweight of the peasantry which, once the plans for a political union of towns and country are completed, will have to be carried with us, is slowing down our movement; but it will never cause us to deviate from the straight and narrow path towards communism.

But all that lay then in the future. At the time, one thing was clear: the workers’-and-peasants’ revolution is a proletarian revolution, a bourgeois-and-workers’ revolution is a betrayal of the working class. To us this was clear, but not to Plekhanov. I remember that during a very biting speech by Plekhanov my neighbour in the next seat, Alexinsky, then a Bolshevik extremist, nearly boxed his ears but was stopped in time by comrade Sedoi, himself a pretty fiery character, who seized him by the coat-tails.

Alas, all that was to end much later in the miserable alliance between Alexinsky and Plekhanov.

It was at the Stockholm Congress that I moved a vote of censure against Plekhanov. My objection amounted to contrasting his view with that of another orthodox theoretician, Kautsky. This was easy, because at that time Kautsky in his pamphlet The Motive Force of the Russian Revolution had shown himself to be in sympathy with us. But Plekhanov was particularly annoyed by my reply to his accusation of Blanquism, when I said that as far as practical notions of making and leading an actual revolution were concerned, he had apparently gathered his ideas from the operetta Mademoiselle Angot. In his final rejoinder Plekhanov said some very angry words.

Several more years went by and we met again at the Copenhagen international congress, when our hopes for the first Russian revolution had foundered. I attended the Copenhagen Congress as a representative of the Forward group with a consultative vote, but I had practically joined the Bolsheviks and they looked upon me as one of them; indeed they again empowered me to represent them on one of the most important committees – the committee dealing with the cooperatives. The same thing happened here. Plekhanov insisted on the strictest separation of the Party from the cooperatives, fearing contamination by the cooperatives’ small-shopkeeper mentality.

I should mention that at the Copenhagen Congress Plekhanov was much closer to the Bolsheviks than to the Mensheviks. As far as I remember Vladimir Ilyich was not too interested in the cooperatives, but nevertheless the Russian delegation listened to my report on the committee and to Plekhanov’s objections. Our differences were more or less parallel to those which had arisen between us at Stuttgart on the subject of the trades unions. On this occasion, however, Plekhanov had had little experience of the problem under discussion and there was no particular cause for a clash with him.

In spite of all this, we remained personally on very good terms. He invited me several times to his rooms, we would leave the congress meetings together and he enjoyed giving me his off-the-record impressions of the conference. Plekhanov had by then aged a great deal and was ill, so seriously ill in fact that we were all concerned about him. This did not stop him from being as sharp as ever, and making witty remarks to left and right, strongly biased though they were. He was fondest of all of the old guard. He spoke particularly warmly and graphically of Guesde and of Lafargue, who was already dead. I mentioned Lenin. Here Plekhanov fell silent and he replied to my enthusiasm in terms that were not exactly deprecatory – if anything they were sympathetic – but were somehow vague.

I remember how during a speech by Vandervelde Plekhanov said to me: ‘Isn’t he exactly like an archdeacon?’ His bon mot struck me so forcibly that to this day I cannot disentangle the image of an Orthodox deacon chanting the responses from the rhetorical fervour of that famous Belgian. I remember, too, in the course of a speech by Bebel how Plekhanov surprised me by the lapidary precision of his remark: ‘Look at that old man – he has exactly the head of Demosthenes.’ At once there arose before my mind’s eye the famous statue of Demosthenes and the likeness seemed truly striking.

After the Copenhagen Congress I had to read a report on it at Geneva and at that meeting Plekhanov was my opponent. Later we arranged a few more discussion meetings, sometimes of a philosophical nature (for instance on a lecture by Deborin) and there Plekhanov and I met again. I was extremely fond of having discussions with Plekhanov, despite their complexity and difficulty, but I will refrain from describing them here as I might appear rather one-sided.

After Plekhanov defected from the revolutionary cause, i.e. after his deviation into social-patriotism, I never saw him again.

This is not, I repeat, an attempt to draw a character-sketch of Plekhanov as a man, a thinker or a politician, but it is simply a contribution to the body of literature on Plekhanov drawn from my personal recollections. It may be that they are coloured rather subjectively, but a writer is inevitably subjective. Let the reader accept them as such. No one man, in any case, is capable of encompassing such a great figure with absolute objectivity. That monumental image can ultimately only be recreated from a host of varying opinions. But one thing I can state: Plekhanov and I often clashed, his printed remarks about me were largely negative and hostile, yet in spite of that my memory of Plekhanov is extraordinarily bright, it is a joy to recall those glittering eyes, that astounding intellectual agility, that greatness of spirit or, as Lenin put it, that physical force of his brain, that aristocratic forehead crowning a great democrat. In the final analysis even our great differences, as they are transmuted into the stuff of history, largely drop from the scales whilst the brilliant aspects of Plekhanov’s character will endure forever.

In Russian literature Plekhanov stands close to Herzen, in the history of socialism he belongs to that constellation (Kautsky, Lafargue, Guesde, Bebel, old Liebknecht) which revolves round those twin suns, Plekhanov’s demigods of whom he – strong, intelligent, incisive and proud as he was – would speak only with the voice of a disciple: Marx and Engels.

Written: 1923.Translated into English: Michael Glenny in 1967

]]>http://www.rogue-state.net/archives/2490/feed0Andrés Nin – The May Days in Barcelonahttp://www.rogue-state.net/archives/2510
http://www.rogue-state.net/archives/2510#commentsWed, 18 May 2016 12:43:34 +0000http://www.rogue-state.net/?p=2510

THE TRAGIC events in Barcelona at the beginning of May were not caused, as has been claimed, by an outburst of stupidity or an act of collective madness. Events of such magnitude, which threw sizeable masses into struggle, bathed the streets of the Catalan capital in blood and cost the lives of hundreds of men, are not produced by caprice: they were a response to profound and powerful causes.

We leave it to the sentimental petty bourgeois to “lament” what happened without pausing to examine the causes of the events; we leave it to the counter-revolutionaries, whose only concern is to smother the revolution, to condemn the movement. It is the duty of true revolutionaries to examine what caused the events and to draw the necessary lessons.

The Military-Fascist Insurrection

The fascist insurrection of 19 July was not a simple act of rebellion by a few military “traitors”, but the culmination, in an acute and violent form, of the struggle begun in Spain between revolution and counter-revolution. The masses’ democratic illusions had been seriously shaken, but were revived by the victory of the labour-republican bloc in the elections of 16 February and the consequent formation of a government of the Left. The working class soon realised that reaction, despite its defeat at the ballot box, had not disarmed but, on the contrary, was preparing with redoubled ardour to take to the streets intent on blocking the advance of the proletarian revolution and installing a dictatorial regime.

The July insurrection occurred after five months’ experience of a new government that demonstrated the absolute impotence of the petty-bourgeois Left to put an end to the fascist danger, or resolve in a progressive way the many political problems the country faced. It fully confirmed the viewpoint, repeatedly expressed by the POUM, that the new experience of the Left would fail, and that a struggle was posed not between democracy and fascism but between fascism and socialism, that this struggle would take an armed form and could not be resolved in favour of the workers and against fascism except by the victory of proletarian revolution, which would solve the problems of the bourgeois democratic revolution and simultaneously begin the socialist transformation of society.

War and Revolution

Thanks to the splendid heroism of the working class, which was unshakeably determined to fight to the death to prevent the victory of fascism, the military insurrection was crushed on 19 July in Barcelona, Madrid and Valencia. Thanks to that prodigious heroism in the battlefields by thousands of workers who immediately and enthusiastically joined the militias, Franco was unable to achieve the victory which he thought quick and certain but which, after ten months of civil war, appears less and less likely.

At the same time as the fascist insurrection was crushed in the most important cities, and the military struggle at the front began, the workers formed revolutionary committees and seized control of the factories, the peasants took possession of the land, they burned down convents and churches – the centres of fascist reaction – in a word, the revolution began, and the old organs of bourgeois power were turned into phantoms. War and revolution, therefore, appeared inseparable from the first moment. Having defeated the insurrection, the workers set about the revolutionary work, whose conquests they defended, and continue to defend, in the trenches. To claim, as the Spanish Communist Party and the PSUC in Catalonia do, that the workers at the front are fighting for the democratic republic, is to betray the proletarian and prepare the ground for a new and victorious attack by fascist reaction.

No one should accept the argument that the struggle in the rear for the socialist revolution favours the plans of the enemy at the front. On the contrary, only an audacious revolutionary policy in the rear, one that is unequivocally socialist, is capable of giving the fighters the courage and moral strength that will make them invincible, and of organising the economy and the war industries with the efficiency necessary to achieve a rapid and overwhelming military victory.

The Advance of Counter-Revolution

Nevertheless, by exploiting the “war difficulties”, the republican bourgeoisie, using as their instrument the reformist parties – specifically the official Communist Party and the PSUC – worked tenaciously and systematically to smother the proletarian revolution: progressively cutting back the conquests of the working class and persecuting its organisations and newspapers, with the aim of restoring the bourgeois state machine and consolidating capitalist rule.

The main signs of the counter-revolutionary plan were: the POUM’s removal from the government of the Generalidad, the partial disarming, up to now, of the working class, the persecution of the CNT’s organ in Madrid, the suspension of La Batalla, the seizure of Combatiente Rojo’s print shop and of our party’s radio station in the capital of the Republic, the arrest of the CNT regional committee in Vizcaya, the suspension of Nosostros in Valencia, the imprisonment of Maroto, a brave anarchist militant, in Almeria, the decrees on public order and the suppression of the people’s courts in Catalonia, the offensive against revolutionary flags, with the aim of replacing them with a “national” flag, the attempt to reconstitute the old bourgeois army through the creation of a Popular Army of automatons, without revolutionary spirit, in the service of bourgeois democracy, the institution of political! censorship, the offensive against the control patrols, etc.

In parallel with the creation of this counter-revolutionary plan, a systematic campaign has been conducted against the CNT and the POUM to defame and discredit us, denouncing our members, who have contributed with the greatest sacrifice and heroism to the war against fascism, as agents of Hitler and Mussolini, resorting to every means, admissible and inadmissible, to establish the monopoly of a party that was originally communist and revolutionary but is today surrendered body and soul to the bourgeoisie, plotting manoeuvres and campaigns against the committees, sabotaging the collectivisation of the economy, ending the control of distribution and sales to benefit spivs and speculators, organising ostentatious and provocative counter-revolutionary demonstrations, and, finally, creating a completely unjustified attitude of ideological hostility towards the revolutionary working class organisations within the state forces.

The Provocation

These actions produced a justified state of anxiety within the working class, who were alarmed that their gains were being snatched away, as the counter-revolution continually advanced. For its part, reformism – the direct agent of the counter-revolution – encouraged by its advances, became more and more insolent and intensified its policy of provocation. In the week preceding the tragic events, the revolutionary workers lived in a state of nervous tension which reached a climax as a result of the attempt to occupy Figueras by the carabineers, the events in Puigcerd and the funeral of the UGT militant Roldán Cortada, the victim of a crime that we did not hesitate to condemn energetically, and which was the pretext for organising a demonstration of a clearly counter-revolutionary character.

In those circumstances, on the afternoon of 3 May, the police, on the authority of A. Aiguadé, the Minister for internal security and representative of the Esquerra in the government of the Generalidad, under the personal and immediate direction of Rodríguez Salas, the commissioner general of public order and a member of the PSUC, attempted to occupy the Telefónica building, which was controlled by a workers’ organisation. They considered the conditions ripe to attack one of the positions conquered by the proletariat in July. It was a trial run, not yet a decisive and comprehensive attack, but it was a serious miscalculation. The workers at the Telefónica responded energetically to the assault, and a violent confrontation ensued. The government and the trade union committees intervened quickly and published a very vague statement which gave the impression that the conflict was about to be resolved.

But the angry workers were not satisfied with this. They understood that it was not a question of an isolated action, that all their conquests were in danger, and they took up arms spontaneously, surrounded the Telefónica, raised barricades throughout the city and began a bloody struggle, which in its extent and violence was unprecedented in the history of our revolutionary movement, and left hundreds of dead and wounded.

The reformist elements claimed that the vigorous reaction of the Barcelona proletariat was the result of a fascist provocation, encouraged by our party. Masters of calumny and defamation, they tried to avoid their own enormous responsibility for the bloodshed by blaming it on the revolutionaries.

The May Days were the direct and immediate consequence of a monstrous provocation by the PSUC. In order to carry out its plans it used Rodríguez Salas, a low life imitation Noske and traitor to the revolutionary proletariat. In those circumstances, to present the events of May as a “fratricidal struggle”, as a violent fight between “the two trade union centres”, is a deliberate falsification, since everyone knows perfectly well that the fight arose between the revolutionary workers, including some in the UGT, and part of the police. The problem that was resolved on the streets was not a simple one of trade union rivalry, but a much deeper problem. The workers who took to the streets, arms in hand, represented the interests of the proletariat at that historic moment.

The Attitude of the POUM

Our party has repeatedly insisted, during these recent times, on the need to provide a political solution to the problems which have arisen during the war and revolution. We even declared that the working class could take power without the need to resort to armed insurrection: it would be enough to bring its enormous influence into play for the relationship of forces to decide in its favour, to achieve a workers’ and peasants’ government without violence of any kind. Failure to confront the problem in these terms, on the political plane, would sooner or later produce a violent explosion, of the accumulated anger of the working class and, as a result, a movement that would be spontaneous, chaotic and lacking in immediate perspectives.

Our predictions have been borne out. The provocative attitude of the counter-revolution caused the explosion. But once the workers were in the streets, our party had to adopt a position. Which? To keep out of the movement, to condemn it or to solidarise with it? Our choice was not difficult. Neither the first nor the second attitude squared with our character as a working class and revolutionary party, and without a moment’s hesitation we opted for the third: to offer our active solidarity with the movement, even though we knew in advance that it could not succeed.

If the decision had depended on us, we would not have ordered the insurrection, as the moment was not favourable for a decisive action. But the revolutionary workers, justifiably indignant at the provocation of which they were the victims, threw themselves into battle, and we could not abandon them. To act otherwise would have been an unpardonable betrayal.

We had to do so, not only because we are a revolutionary party, morally obliged to stand by the workers when, rightly or wrongly, they enter into battle in defence of their conquests, but also because of the need to help channel a movement which because of its spontaneity had many chaotic aspects, in order to avoid it being transformed into a fruitless putsch, which would have resulted in a bloody defeat for the proletariat.

The armed struggle developed in such a way because of the impetus of the revolutionary workers and the importance of the strategic positions they held, that it would have been possible to take power. But our party, as a minority force within the workers’ movement, could not take the responsibility of issuing such a slogan given the attitude of the leaders of the CNT and FAI, whose Barcelona radio called urgently for the workers to abandon the struggle immediately, creating confusion and bewilderment among the combatants. In these circumstances, to call on the workers to take power would inevitably have been to launch a putsch which would have had fatal consequences for the proletariat.

It was necessary to provide limited slogans for the movement. That is what our party did, demanding the dismissal of Rodríguez Salas and Aiguadé, who were directly responsible for the provocation, the annulment of the reactionary decrees on public order and the creation of committees for the defence of the revolution. When we estimated that if the movement continued it would inevitably lead to failure – not because of any lack of fighting spirit on the part of the workers, who had achieved truly prodigious feats of heroism, but because of the disorientation caused by the attitude of the leading committees of the revolutionary syndicalist organisations – we considered that in the interests of the proletariat the struggle should be brought to an end.

But for this to happen, we considered two conditions were necessary: that the state forces should withdraw and that he workers should keep their arms. The continued presence of the state forces on the streets could be interpreted as a defeat of the working class, when in reality it had effected a strategic retreat. In addition, it would constitute a provocation liable to promote new and violent clashes. Disarmament would mean depriving the proletariat of the most reliable guarantee of their conquests and deprive them of the means to resist any counter-revolutionary attempt or fascist coup. On the morning of 8 May we advised the workers to abandon the fight and return to work, while advancing those slogans.

We take pride in declaring that the stance of our party, whose prestige has grown considerably among the revolutionary workers, contributed effectively to ending the bloody struggle that had taken place in the streets of Barcelona and prevented the workers’ movement from being crushed by ferocious repression.

Any honest person reading this brief account of the origin, development and outcome of the May Days, will easily see what were the true causes of the tragedy. Our party – which is now attacked by counter-revolutionaries of every kind – played no part in provoking it – contrary to the claims of those whose sole objective is to defend the interests of the bourgeoisie, and to smother the glorious revolution begun on 19 July – strictly fulfilled the duty imposed on it by its unshakeable loyalty to the workers’ cause.

The Lessons of the May Days

The working class must learn the necessary lessons from the bloody May Days, which are bound to have an enormous significance for the future development of the Spanish revolution, if its generous sacrifice is not to be in vain.

First lesson. The abundant propaganda produced during recent months by the petty bourgeoisie and reformism in favour of anti-fascist unity has the sole object of exploiting the working masses’ desire for unity and their hatred of fascism in order to strangle the revolution and re-establish the bourgeois state machine.

Second lesson. The campaign conducted under the slogans, “first win the war, then carry out the revolution”, and “everything for the war”, conceals the real aim of smothering the revolution. It is an indispensable premise for leaving the hands free to negotiate a “white” peace. The progressive suppression of the revolutionary gains, the threat of foreign intervention, which was about to happen when foreign warships arrived at the port of Barcelona, the increasingly insistent rumours, of a possible “embrace of Vergara” [2], coinciding with the provocation of 3 May, are a clear proof of this.

Third lesson. For the proletariat and for military victory there is only one progressive way out of the present situation: the conquest of power. During the May Days that was possible but did not happen because the traditional organisations, inspired by anarchist doctrine, did not face up to the problem and because our party, which has not ceased to confront it during the entire course of the revolution, is a young and minority organisation, which does not have enough support to take the responsibility to direct the struggle. The immediate and fundamental mission of the proletariat is to prepare to overthrow the political power of the bourgeoisie.

Therefore, it is necessary to build the “Workers’ Revolutionary Front”, that is to say, to form an alliance of those workers’ organisations that are ready to form a barrier against the advance of the bourgeois counter-revolution and to drive the proletarian revolution forward. One of the concrete forms of this Workers’ Revolutionary Front can be the COMMITTEES FOR THE DEFENCE OF THE REVOLUTION, which must be built immediately in all the workplaces, in all the neighbourhoods, in all the localities, and which must co-ordinate their activity through a CENTRAL DEFENCE COMMITTEE which expresses the will of all the committees.

Fourth lesson. The victory of the working class is impossible without a responsible leadership, that knows what it wants and where it is going, and co-ordinates the struggle. THE WORKERS’ REVOLUTIONARY FRONT can be the indispensable basis of that leadership.

Fifth lesson. The conduct of the Spanish Communist Party and its subsidiary the PSUC in Catalonia during the May Days has demonstrated that these parties do not represent a mere reformist tendency in the workers’ movement, but constitute the vanguard and the instrument of bourgeois counter-revolution. For that reason, while a united front with these parties is indispensable, for the struggle against fascism, as it is with the petty bourgeois organisations, any possibility of common political action must be ruled out. The representatives of the revolutionary proletariat and of the executioners of the working class cannot sit at the same table. To that Popular Anti-Fascist Front, synonymous with class collaboration and political counter-revolution, it is necessary to oppose the WORKERS’ REVOLUTIONARY FRONT. FOR THE DEFENCE OF THE REVOLUTION! FOR A WORKERS’ AND PEASANTS’ GOVERNMENT!

The struggle under way in Spain between revolution and counter-revolution is now entering a new phase, in which the proletariat, educated by the experience of these months of struggle and, above all, by the magnificent May Days, must direct all its forces towards strengthening its class independence, defending the conquests of the revolution and preparing for the taking of power, the indispensable premise for the institution of a socialist regime which will regenerate the country’s economy and establish order. Let no one say that the revolution will lose us the war, to whose victorious outcome we have to dedicate the greatest efforts. There are well founded reasons to believe that the “democratic” powers are actively intriguing to impose an armistice that the Spanish workers indignantly reject. As the revolutionary organisations are the main obstacle to these shady deals there is a plan to eliminate us from public life, by one means or another.

However, the working class will not allow itself to be misled, but will defend the conquests it has made and take power, with the same heroic impulse with which it defeated fascism in Madrid, Valencia and Barcelona on the 19 July and generously shed its blood in the battlefields, convinced that only the victorious proletarian revolution can bring the war to its final consequences: the crushing of fascism and the establishment of socialism.

LONG LIVE THE COMMITTEES FOR THE DEFENCE OF THE REVOLUTION! LONG LIVE THE WORKERS’ AND PEASANTS’ GOVERNMENT!

Barcelona, 12 May 1937. Central Committee of the POUM.

Notes

1. This piece first appeared as a statement by the Central Committee of the Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista (POUM), under the title El significada y alcance de las jornados de mayo frente a la contrarrevolution. The original can be consulted on the Fundación Andreu Nin website (www.fundanin.org). We are grateful to John Sullivan for checking and amending the translation.

2. The embrace of generals Espartero and Maroto at Vegara in 1839 ended the first Carlist war.

“It is a pity that such men as Elisée Reclus cannot be promptly shot.” — Providence Press

To most Englishmen, the word Anarchy is so evil-sounding that ordinary readers of the Contemporary Review will probably turn from these pages with aversion, wondering how anybody could have the audacity to write them. With the crowd of commonplace chatterers we are already past praying for; no reproach is too bitter for us, no epithet too insulting. Public speakers on social and political subjects find that abuse of Anarchists is an unfailing passport to public favor. Every conceivable crime is laid to our charge, and opinion, too indolent to learn the truth, is easily persuaded that Anarchy is but another name for wickedness and chaos. Overwhelmed with opprobrium and held up with hatred, we are treated on the principle that the surest way of hanging a dog is to give it a bad name.

There is nothing surprising in all this. The chorus of imprecations with which we are assailed is quite in the nature of things, for we speak in a tongue unhallowed by usage, and belong to none of the parties that dispute the possession of power. Like all innovators, whether they be violent of pacific, we bring not peace but a sword, and are nowise astonished to be received as enemies.

Yet it is not with light hearts that we incur so much ill-will, nor are we satisfied with merely knowing that it is undeserved. To risk the loss of so precious an advantage as popular sympathy without first patiently searching out the truth and carefully considering our duty would be an act of reckless folly. To a degree never dreamt of by men who are born unresistingly on the great current of public opinion, are we bound to render to our conscience a reason for the faith that is in us, to strengthen our convictions by study of nature and mankind, and, above all, to compare them with that ideal justice which has been slowly elaborated by the untold generations of the human race. This ideal is known to all, and is almost too trite to need repeating. It exists in the moral teaching of every people, civilized or savage; every religion has tried to adapt it to its dogmas and precepts, for it is the ideal of equality of rights and reciprocity of services. “We are all brethren,” is a saying repeated from one end of the world to the other, and the principle of universal brotherhood expressed in this saying implies a complete solidarity of interests and efforts.

Accepted in its integrity by simple souls, does not this principle seem to imply as a necessary consequence the social state formulated by modern socialists: “From each according to ability, to each according to needs”? Well, we are simple souls, and we hold firmly to this ideal of human morality. Of a surety there is much dross mixed with the pure metal, and the personal and collective egoisms of families, cities, castes, peoples, and parties have wrought on this groundwork some startling variations. But we have not to do here with the ethics of selfish interests, it is enough to identify the central point of convergence towards which all partial ideas more or less tend. This focus of gravitation is justice. If humanity be not a vain dream, if all our impressions, all our thoughts, are not pure hallucinations, one capital fact dominates the history of humanity — that every kindred and people yearns after justice. The very life of humanity is but one long cry for that fraternal equity which still remains unattained. Listen to the words, uttered nearly three thousand years ago, of old Hesiod, answering beforehand all those who contend that the struggle for existence dooms us to eternal strife. “Let fishes, the wild beasts and birds, devour one and other — but our law is justice.”

Yet how vast is the distance that still separates us from the justice invoked by the poet in the very dawn of history! How great is the progress we have still to make before we may rightfully cease comparing ourselves with wild creatures fighting for a morsel of carrion! It is in vain that we pretend to be civilized, if civilization be that which Mr. Alfred R. Wallace has described as “the harmony of individual liberty with the collective will.” It is really too easy to criticize contemporary society, its morals, its conventions, and its laws, and to show how much its practices fall short of the ideal justice formulated by thinkers and desired by peoples. To repeat stale censures is to risk having called mere disclaimers, scatters of voices in the market-place. And yet so long as the truth is not heard, is it not our duty to go on speaking it in season and out of season? A sincere person owes it to themselves to expose the frightful barbarity which still prevails in the hidden depths of a society so outwardly well-ordered. Take, for instance, our great cities, the leaders of civilization, especially the most populous, and, in many respects, the first of all — the immense London, which gathers to herself the riches of the world, whose every warehouse is worth a king’s ransom; where are to be found enough, and more than enough, of food and clothing for the needs of the teeming millions that throng her streets in greater numbers than the ants which swarm in the never-ending labyrinth of their subterranean galleries. And yet the wretched who cast longing and hungry eyes on those hoards of wealth may be counted by the hundred thousand; by the side of untold splendors, want is consuming the vitals of entire populations, and it is only at times that the fortunate for whom these treasures are amassed hear, as a muffled wailing, the bitter cry which rises eternally from those unseen depths. Below the London of fashion is a London accursed, a London whose only food are dirt-stained fragments, whose only garments are filthy rags, and whose only dwellings are fetid dens. Have the disinherited the consolation of hope? No: they are deprived of all. There are some among them who live and die in dampness and gloom without once raising their eyes to the sun.

What boots it to the wretched outcast, burning with fever or craving for bread, that the Book of the Christians opens the doors of heaven more widely to them than to the rich! Besides their present misery, all these promises of happiness, even if they heard them, would seem the bitterest irony. Does it not appear, moreover, — judging by the society in which the majority of preachers of the Gospel most delight, — that the words of Jesus are reversed, that the “Kingdom of God” is the guerdon of the fortunate of this world, — a world where spiritual and temporal government are on the best of terms, and religion leads as surely to earthly power as to heavenly bliss? “Religion is a cause for preferment, irreligion a bar to it,” as a famous commentator of the Bible, speaking to his sovereign, said it ought to be.

When ambition thus finds its account in piety, and hypocrites practice religion in order to give what they are pleased to call their conscience a higher mercantile value, is it surprising that the great army of the hopeless should forget the way to the church? Do they deceive themselves in thinking that, despite official invitations, they would not always be well received in the “houses of God”? Without speaking here of churches whose sittings are sold at a price, where you may enter only purse in hand, is it nothing to the poor to feel themselves arrested on the threshold by the cold looks of well-clad men and the tightened lips of elegant women? True, no wall bars the passage, but an obstacle still more formidable stops the way, — the dark atmosphere of hatred and disgust which rises between the disinherited and the world’s elect.

Yet the first word uttered by the minister when he stand stands up in the pulpit is “Brethren,” a word which, by a characteristic differentiation, has come to mean no more than a sort of potential and theoretic fraternity without practical reality. Nevertheless, its primitive sense has not altogether perished, and if the outcast that hears it be not stupefied by hunger, if he be not one of those boneless beings who repeat idiotically all they hear, what bitter thoughts will be suggested by this word “brethren” coming from the lips of men who feel so little its force! The impressions of my childhood surge back into my mind. When I heard for the first time an earnest and eager voice beseech the “Father who is in heaven” to give us “our daily bread,” it seemed to me that by a mysterious act a meal would descend from on high on all the tables of the world. I imagined that these words, repeated millions of times, were a cry of human brotherhood, and that each, in uttering them, thought of all. I deceived myself. With some, the prayer is sincere; with the greater part it is but an empty sound, a gust of wind like that which passes through the reeds.

Governments at least talk not to the poor about fraternity; they do not torment them with so sorry a jest. It is true that in some countries the jargon of courts compare the Sovereign to a father whose subjects are his children, and upon whom he pours the inexhaustible dews of his love; but this formula, which the hungry might abuse by asking for bread, is no longer taken seriously. So long as Governments were looked upon as direct representatives of a heavenly Sovereign, holding their powers by the grace of God, the comparison was legitimate; but there are very few now that make any claim to this quasi-divinity. Shorn of the sanctions of religion, they no longer hold themselves answerable for the general weal, contenting themselves instead with promising good administration, impartial justice, and strict economy in the administration of public affairs. Let history tell how these promises have been kept. Nobody can study contemporary politics without being struck by the truth of the words attributed alike to Oxenstjerna and Lord Chesterfield: “Go, my son, and see with how little the world is governed!” It is now a matter of common knowledge that power, whether its nature be monarchic, aristocratic, or democratic, whether it be based on the right of the sword, of inheritance, or of election, is wielded by individuals neither better nor worse than their fellows, but whose position exposes them to greater temptations to do evil. Raised above the crowd, whom they soon learn to despise, they end by considering themselves as essentially superior beings; solicited by ambition in a thousand forms, by vanity, greed, and caprice, they are all the more easily corrupted that a rabble of interested flatterers is ever on the watch to profit by their vices. And possessing as they do a preponderant influence in all things, holding the powerful lever whereby is moved the immense mechanism of the State — functionaries, soldiers, and police — every one of their oversights, their faults, or their crimes repeats itself to infinity and magnifies as it grows. It is only too true: a fit of impatience in a Sovereign, a crooked look, an equivocal word, may plunge nations into mourning and be fraught with disaster for mankind. English readers, brought up to a knowledge of Biblical lore, will remember the striking parable of the trees who wanted a king [Judges 9:8]. The peaceful trees and the strong, those who love work and whom man blesses; the olive that makes oil, the fig-tree that grows good fruit, the vine that produces wine, “which cheereth God and man,” refuse to reign; the bramble accepts, and of that noxious briar is born the flame which devours the cedars of Lebanon.

But these depositaries of power who are charged, whether by right divine or universal suffrage, with the august mission of dispensing justice, can they be considered as in any way more infallible, or even impartial? Can it be said that the laws and their interpreters shows towards all people the ideal equity as it exists in popular conception? Are the judges blind when there come before them the wealthy and the poor — Shylock, with his murderous knife, and the unfortunate who has sold beforehand pounds of their flesh or ounces of their blood? Hold they always even scales between the king’s son and the beggar’s brat? That these magistrates should firmly believe in their own impartiality and think themselves incarnate right in human shape, is quite natural; everyone puts on — sometimes without knowing it — the peculiar morality of their calling; yet, judges, no more than priests, can withstand the influence of their surroundings. Their sense of what constitutes justice, derived from the average opinion of the age, is insensibly modified by the prejudices of their class. How honest soever they may be, they cannot forget that they belong to the rich and powerful, or to those, less fortunate, who are still on the look-out for preferment and honor. They are moreover blindly attached to precedent, and fancy that practices inherited from their forerunners must needs be right. Yet when we examine official justice without prejudice, how many inequities do we find in legal procedures! Thus the English are scandalized — and rightly so — by the French fashion of examining prisoners, those sacred beings who are in strict probity ought to be held innocent until they are proven guilty; while the French are disgusted, and not without reason, to see English justice, through the English Government, publicly encourage treachery by offers of impunity and money to the betrayer, thereby deepening the degradation of the debased and provoking acts of shameful meanness which children in their schools, more moral than their elders, regard with unfeigned horror.

Nevertheless, law, like religion, plays only a secondary part in contemporary society. It is invoked but rarely to regulate the relations between the poor and the rich, the powerful and the weak. These relations are the outcome of economic laws and the evolution of a social system based on inequality of conditions.

Laissez faire! Let things alone! have said the judges of the camp. Careers are open; and although the field is covered with corpses, although the conqueror stamps on the bodies of the vanquished, although by supply and demand, and the combinations and monopolies in which they result, the greater part of society becomes enslaved to the few, let things along — for thus has decreed fair play. It is by virtue of this beautiful system that a parvenu, without speaking of the great lord who receives counties as his heritage, is able to conquer with ready money thousands of acres, expel those who cultivate his domain, and replace people and their dwellings with wild animals and rare trees. It is thus that a tradesman, more cunning or intelligent, or, perhaps, more favored by luck than his fellows, is enabled to become master of an army of workers, and as often as not to starve them at his pleasure. In a word, commercial competition, under the paternal aegis of the law, lets the great majority of merchants — the fact is attested numberless medical inquests — adulterate provisions and drink, sell pernicious substances as wholesome food, and kill by slow poisoning, without for one day neglecting their religious duties, their brothers in Jesus Christ. Let people say what they will, slavery, which abolitionists strove so gallantly to extirpate in America, prevails in another form in every civilized country; for entire populations, placed between the alternatives of death by starvation and toils which they detest, are constrained to choose the latter. And if we would deal frankly with the barbarous society to which we belong, we must acknowledge that murder, albeit disguised under a thousand insidious and scientific forms, still, as in the times of primitive savagery, terminates the majority of lives. The economist sees around them but one vast field of carnage, and with the coldness of the statistician they count the slain as on the evening after a great battle. Judge by these figures. The mean mortality among the well-to-do is, at the utmost, one in sixty. Now the population of Europe being a third of a thousand millions, the average deaths, according to the rate of mortality among the fortunate, should not exceed five millions. They are three times five millions! What have we done with these ten million human beings killed before their time? If it be true that we have duties, one towards the other, are we not responsible for the servitude, the cold, the hunger, the miseries of every sort, which doom the unfortunate to untimely deaths? Race of Cains, what have we done with our brothers and sisters?

And what are the remedies proposed for the social ills which are consuming the very marrow in our bones? Can charity, as assert many good souls — who are answered in chorus by a crowd of egoists — can charity by any possibility deal with so vast an evil? True, we know some devoted ones who seem to live only that they may do good. In England, above all, is this the case. Among childless women who are constrained to lavish their love on their kind are to be found many of those admirable beings whose lives are passed in consoling the afflicted, visiting the sick, and ministering the young. We cannot help being touched by the exquisite benevolence, the indefatigable solicitude shown by these ladies towards their unhappy fellow creatures; but, taken even in their entirety, what economic value can be attached to these well-meant efforts? What sum represents the charities of a year in comparison with the gains which hucksters of money and hawkers of loans oftentimes make by the speculations of a single day? While Ladies Bountiful are giving a cup of tea to a pauper, or preparing a potion for the sick, a father or brother, by a hardly stroke on the Stock Exchange or a successful transaction in produce, may reduce to ruin thousands of British workers or Hindu coolies. And how worthy of respect soever may be deeds of unobstentations charity, is it not the fact that the bestowal of alms is generally a matter of personal caprice, and that their distribution is too often influenced rather by political and religious sympathies of the giver than by the moral worth of the recipient? Even were help always given to those who most need it, charity would be none the less tainted with the capital vice, that it infallibly constitutes relations of inequality between the benefited and the benefactor. The latter rejoices in the consciousness of doing a good thing, as if they were not simply discharging a debt; and the former asks bread as a favor, when they should demand work as a right, or, if helpless, human solidarity. Thus are created and developed hideous mendacity with its lies, its tricks, and its base, heart-breaking hypocrisy. How much nobler are the customs of some so-called “barbarous countries” where the hungry person simply stops by the side of those who eat, is welcomed by all, and then, when satisfied, with a friendly greeting withdraws — remaining in every respect the equal of their host, and fretting under no painful sense of obligation for favors received! But charity breeds patronage and platitudes — miserable fruits of a wretched system, yet the best which a society of capitalists has to offer!

II

Hence we may say that, in letting those whom they govern — and the responsibility for whose fate they thereby accept — waste by want, sink under exposure, and deteriorate by vice, the leaders of modern society have committed moral bankruptcy. But where the masters have come short, free individuals may, perchance, succeed. The failure of governments is no reason why we should be discouraged; on the contrary, it shows us the danger of entrusting to others the guardianship of our rights, and makes us all the more firmly resolved to take our own cause into our own care. We are not among those whom the practice of social hypocrisies, the long weariness of a crooked life, and the uncertainty of the future have reduced to necessity of asking ourselves — without daring to answer it — the sad question: “Is life worth living?” Yes, to us life does seem worth living, but on condition that it has an end — not personal happiness, not a paradise, either in this world or the next — but the realization of a cherished wish, an ideal that belongs to us and springs from our innermost conscience. We are striving to draw nearer to that ideal equality which, century after century, has hovered before subject peoples like a heavenly dream. The little that each of us can do offers an ample recompense for the perils of the combat. On these terms life is good, even a life of suffering and sacrifice — even though it may be cut short by premature death.

The first condition of equality, without which any other progress is merest mockery — the object of all socialists without exception — is that every human being shall have bread. To talk of duty, of renunciation, of ethernal virtues to the famishing, is nothing less than cowardice. Dives has no right to preach morality to the beggar at his gates. If it were true that civilized lands did not produce food enough for all, it might be said that, by virtue of vital competition, bread should be reserved for the strong, and that the weak must content themselves with the crumbs that fall from the feasters’ tables. In a family where love prevails things are not ordered in this way; on the contrary, the small and the ailing receive the fullest measure; yet it is evident that dearth may strengthen the hands of the violent and make the powerful monopolizers of bread. But are our modern societies really reduced to these straits? On the contrary, whatever may be the value of Malthus’s forecast as to the distant future, it is an actual, incontestable fact that in the civilized countries of Europe and America the sum total of provisions produced, or received in exchange for manufacturers, is more than enough for the sustenance of the people. Even in times of partial dearth the granaries and warehouses have but to open their doors that every one may have a sufficient share. Notwithstanding waste and prodigality, despite the enormous losses arising from moving about and handling in warehouses and shops, there is always enough to feed generously all the world. And yet there are some who die of hunger! And yet there are fathers who kill their children because when the little ones cry for bread they have none to give them.

Others may turn their eyes from these horrors; we socialists look them full in the face, and seek out their cause. That cause is the monopoly of the soil, the appropriation by a few of the land which belongs to all. We Anarchists are not the only ones to say it: the cry for nationalization of the land is rising so high that all may hear it who do not willfully close their ears. The idea spreads fast, for private property, in its present form, has had its day, and historians are everywhere testifying that the old Roman law is not synonymous with ethanol justice. Without doubt it were vain to hope that holders of the soil, saturated, so to speak, with ideas of caste, of privilege, and of inheritance, will voluntarily give back to all the bread-yielding furrows; the glory will not be theirs of joining as equals their fellow-citizens; but when public opinion is ripe — and day by day it grows — individuals will oppose in vain the general concourse of wills, and the axe will be applied to the upas tree’s roots. Arable land will be held once more in common; but instead of being ploughed and sown almost at hazard by ignorant hands, as it has hitherto been, science will aid us in the choice of climate, of soils, of methods of culture, of fertilizers, and of machinery. Husbandry will be guided by the same prescience as mechanical combinations and chemical operations; but the fruits of their toil will not be lost to the laborer. Many so-called savage societies hold their land in common, and humble though in our eyes they may seem, they are our betters in this: want among them is unknown. Are we, then, too ambitious in desiring to attain a social state which shall add to the conquests of civilization the privileges of these primitive tribes? Through the education of our children we may to some extent fashion the future.

After we have bread for all, we shall require something more — equality of rights; but this point will soon be realized, for an individual who needs not incline themselves before their fellows to crave pittance is already their equal. Equality of conditions, which is in no way incompatible with the infinite diversity of human character, we already desire and look upon as indispensable, for it offers us the only means whereby a true public morality can be developed. An individual can be truly moral only when they are their own master. From the moment when they awaken to a comprehension of that which is equitable and good it is for them to direct their own movements, to seek in the their conscience reasons for their actions, and to perform them simply, without either fearing punishment or looking for reward. Nevertheless their will cannot fail to be strengthened when they see others, guided like themselves by their own volition, following the same line of conduct. Mutual example will soon constitute a collective code of ethics to which all may conform without effort; but the moment that orders, enforced by legal penalties, replace the personal impulses of the conscience, there is an end to morality. Hence the saying of the Apostle of the Gentiles, “the law makes sin.” Even more, it is sin itself, because, instead of appealing to humanity’s better part, to it’s bold initiative, it appeals to it’s worst — it rules by fear. It thus behooves every one to resist the laws that they have not made, and to defend their personal rights, which are also the rights of others. People often speak of the antagonism between rights and duties. It is an empty phrase; there is no such antagonism. Whoso vindicates their own rights fulfills at the same time their duty towards their fellows. Privilege, not right, is the converse of duty.

Besides the possession of an individual’s own person, sound morality involves yet another condition — mutual goodwill, which is likewise the outcome of equality. The time-honored words of Mahabarata are as true as ever: “The ignorant are not the friends of the wise; the man who has no cart is not the friend of him who has a cart. Friendship is the daughter of equality; it is never born of inequality.” Without doubt it is given to some people, great by their thoughts, by sympathy, or by strength of will, to win the multitude; but if the attachment of their followers and admirers comes otherwise than an enthusiastic affinity of idea to idea, or of heart to heart, it is speedily transformed either into fanaticism or servility. Those who are hailed lord by the acclamations of the crowd must almost of necessity attribute to themselves exceptional virtues, or a “Grace of God,” that makes them in their own estimation as a predestined being, and they usurp without hesitation or remorse privileges which they transmit as a heritage of their children. But, while in rank exalted, they are morally degraded, and their partisans and sycophants are more degraded still: they wait for the words of command which fall from the master’s lips; when they hear in the depths of their conscience some faint note of dissent, it is stifled; they become practiced liars, they stoop to flattery, and lose the power of looking honest individuals in the face. Between those who command and those who obey, and whose degradation deepens from generation to generation, there is no possibility of friendship. The virtues are transformed; brotherly frankness is destroyed; independence becomes a crime; above is either pitying condescension or haughty contempt, below either envious admiration or hidden hate. Let each of us recall the past and ask ourselves in all sincerity the question: “Who are the individuals in whose society we have experienced the most pleasure?” Are they the personages who have “honored” us with their conversation, or the humble with whom we have “deigned” to associate? Are they not rather our equals, those whose looks neither implore nor command, and whom we may love with open hearts without afterthought or reserve.

It is to live in conditions of equality and escape from the falsehoods and hypocrisies of a society of superiors and inferiors, that so many men and women have formed themselves into close corporations and little worlds apart. America abounds in communities of this sort. But these societies, few of which prosper while many perish, are all ruled more or less by force; they carry within themselves the seed of their own dissolution, and are reabsorbed by Nature’s law of gravitation into the world which they have left. Yet even were they perfection, if humans enjoyed in them the highest happiness of which their nature is capable, they would be none the less obnoxious to the charge of selfish isolation, of raising a wall between themselves and the rest of their race; their pleasures are egotistical, and devotion to the cause of humanity would draw back the best of them into the great struggle.

As for the Anarchists, never will we separate ourselves from the world to build a little church, hidden in some vast wilderness. Here is the fighting ground, and we remain in the ranks, ready to give our help wherever it may be most needed. We do not cherish premature hopes, but we know that our efforts will not be lost. Many of the ignorant, who either out of love of routine or simplicity of soul now anathematize us, will end by associating themselves with our cause. For every individual whom circumstances permit to join us freely, hundreds are hindered by the hard necessities of life from openly avowing our opinions, but they listen from afar and cherish our words in the treasury of their hearts. We know that we are defending the cause of the poor, the disinherited, the suffering; we are seeking to restore to them the earth, personal rights, confidence in the future; and is it not natural that they should encourage us by look and gesture, even when they dare not come to us? In times of trouble, when the iron hand of might loosens its hold, and paralyzed rulers reel under the weight of their own power; when the “groups,” freed for an instant from the pressure above, reform themselves according to their natural affinities, on which side will be the many? Though making no pretension to prophetic insight, may we not venture without temerity to say that the great multitude would join our ranks? Albeit they never weary of repeating that Anarchism is merely the dream of a few visionaries, do not even our enemies, by the insults they heap upon us and the projects and machinations they impute to us, make an incessant propaganda in our favor? It is said that, when the magicians of the Middle Ages wanted to raise the devil, they began their incantations by painting his image on a wall. For a long time past, modern exorcists have adopted a similar method for conjuring Anarchists.

Pending the great work of the coming time, and to the end that this work may be accomplished, it behooves us to utilize every opportunity for rede and deed. Meanwhile, although our object is to live without government and without law, we are obliged in many things to submit. On the other hand, how often are we enabled to disregard their behest and act on our own free will? Ours be it to let slip none of these occasions, and to accept tranquility whatever personal consequences may result from doing that which we believe to be our duty. In no case will we strengthen authority by appeals or petitions, neither shall we sanction the law by demanding justice from the courts nor, by giving our votes and influence to any candidate whatsoever, become the authors of our own ill-fortune? It is easy for us to accept nothing from power, to call no one “master,” neither to be called “master” ourselves, to remain in the ranks as simple citizens and to maintain resolutely, and in every circumstance, our quality of equal among citizens. Let our friends judge us by our deeds, and reject from among them those of us who falter.

There are unquestionably many kind-hearted individuals that, as yet. hold themselves aloof from us, and even view our efforts with a certain apprehension, who would nevertheless gladly lend us their help were they not repelled by fear of the violence which almost invariably accompanies revolution. And yet a close study of the present state of things would show them that the supposed period of tranquility in which we live is really an age of cruelty and violence. Not to speak of war and its crimes, from the guilt of which no civilized State is free, can it be denied that chief among the consequences of the existing social system are murder, maladies, and death. Accustomed order is maintained by rude deeds and brute force, yet things that happen every day and every hour pass unperceived; we see in them a series of ordinary events no more phenomenal than times and seasons. It seems less than impious to rebel against the cycle of violence and repression which comes to us hallowed by the sanction of ages. Far from desiring to replace an era of happiness and peace by an age of disorder and warfare, our sole aim is to put an end to the endless series of calamities which has hitherto been called by common consent “The Progress of Civilization.” On the other hand, vengeances are the inevitable incidents of a period of violent changes. It is the nature of things that they should be. Albeit deeds of violence, prompted by a spirit of hatred, bespeak a feeble moral development, these deeds become fatal and necessary whenever the relations between people are not the relations of perfect equity. The original form of justice as understood by primitive peoples was that of retaliation, and by thousands of rude tribes this system is still observed. Nothing seemed more just than to offset one wrong by a like wrong. Eye for an eye! Tooth for a tooth! If the blood of one person has been shed, another must die! This was the barbarous form of justice. In our civilized societies it is forbidden to individuals to take the law into their own hands. Governments, in their quality of social delegates, are charged on behalf of the community with the enforcement of justice, a sort of retaliation somewhat more enlightened than that of the savage. It is on this condition that the individual renounces the right of personal vengeance; but if they be deceived by the mandatories to whom they entrust the vindication of their rights, if they perceive that their agents betray their cause and league themselves with the oppressors, that official justice aggravates their wrongs; in a word, if whole classes and populations are unfairly used, and have no hope of finding in the society to which they belong a redresser of abuses, is it not certain that they will resume their inherent right of vengeance and execute it without pity? Is not this indeed an ordinance of Nature, a consequence of the physical law of shock and counter-shock? It were unphilosophic to be surprised by its existence. Oppression has always been answered by violence.

Nevertheless, if great human evolutions are always followed by sad outbreaks of personal hatreds, it is not to these bad passions that well-wishers of their kind appeal when they wish to rouse the motive virtues of enthusiasm, devotion, and generosity. If changes had no other result than to punish oppressors, to make them suffer in their turn, to repay evil with evil, the transformation would be only in seeming. What boots it to those who truly love humanity and desire the happiness of all that the slave becomes master, that the master is reduced to servitude, that the whip changes hands, and that money passes from one pocket to another? It is not the rich and the powerful whom we devote to destruction, but the institutions which have favored the birth and growth of these malevolent beings. It is the medium which it behooves us to alter, and for this great work we must reserve all our strength; to waste it in personal vindications were merest puerility. “Vengeance is the pleasure of the gods,” said the ancients; but it is not the pleasure of self-respecting mortals; for they know that to become their own avengers would be to lower themselves to the level of their former oppressors. If we would rise superior to our adversary, we must, after vanquishing them, make them bless their defeat. The revolutionary device, “For our liberty and for yours,” must not be an empty word.

The people in all times have felt this; and after every temporary triumph the generosity of the victor has obliterated the menaces of the past. It is a constant fact that in all serious popular movements, made for an idea, hope of a better time, and above all, the sense of a new dignity, fills the soul with high and magnanimous sentiments. So soon as the police, both political and civil, cease their functions and the masses become masters of the streets, the moral atmosphere changes, each feels themselves responsible for the prosperity and contentment of all; molestation of individuals is almost unheard of; even professional criminals pause in their sad career, for they too, feel that something great is passing through the air. Ah! if revolutionaries, instead of obeying a vague idea as they have almost always done, had formed a definite aim, a well-considered scheme of social conduct, if they had firmly willed the establishment of a new order of things in which every citizen might be assured bread, work, instruction, and the free development of their being, there would have been no danger in opening all prison gates to their full width, and saying to the unfortunates whom they shut in, “Go, brothers and sisters, and sin no more.”

It is always to the nobler part of humanity that we should address ourselves when we want to do great deeds. A general fighting for a bad cause stimulates their soldiers with promises of booty; a benevolent individual who cherishes a noble object encourages their companions by the example of their own devotion and self-sacrifice. For them, faith in their idea is enough. As says the proverb of the Danish peasants: “His will is his paradise.” What matters is that he is treated like a visionary! Even though his undertakings were only a chimera, he knows nothing more beautiful and sweet than the desire to act rightly and do good; in comparison with this vulgar realties are for him but shadows, the apparitions of an instant.

But our ideal is not a chimera. This, public opinion well knows; for no question more preoccupies it than that of social transformation. Events are casting their shadows before. Among individuals who think is there one who in some fashion or another is not a socialist — that is to say, who has not their own little scheme for changes in economic relations? Even the orator who noisily denies that there is a social question affirms the contrary by a thousand propositions. And those who will lead us back to the Middle Ages, are they not also socialists? They think they have found in a past, restored after modern ideas, conditions of social justice which will establish for ever the brotherhood of man. All are awaiting the birth of a new order of things; all ask themselves, some with misgiving, others with hope, what the morrow will bring forth. It will not come with empty hands. The century which has witnessed so many grand discoveries in the world of science cannot pass away without giving us still greater conquests. Industrial appliances, that by a single electric impulse make the same thought vibrate through five continents, have distanced by far our social morals, which are yet in many regards the outcome of reciprocally hostile interests. The axis is displaced; the world must crack that its equilibrium may be restored. In spirit revolution is ready; it is already thought — it is already willed; it only remains to realize it, and this is not the most difficult part of the work. The Governments of Europe will soon have reached the limits to the expansion of their power and find themselves face to face with their increasing populations. The super-abundant activity which wastes itself in distant wars must then find employment at home — unless in their folly the shepherds of the people should try to exhaust their energies by setting the Europeans against Europeans, as they have done before. It is true that in this way they may retard the solution of the social problem, but it will rise again after each postponement, more formidable than before.

Let economists and rulers invent political constitutions or salaried organizations, whereby the worker may be the friend of their master, the subject the brother of the potentate, we, “frightful Anarchists” as we are, know only one way of establishing peace and goodwill among women and men — the suppression of privilege and the recognition of right. Our ideal, as we have said, is that of the fraternal equity for which all yearn, but almost always as a dream; with us it takes form and becomes a concrete reality. It pleases us not to live if the enjoyments of life are to be for us alone; we protest against our good fortune if we may not share it with others; it is sweeter for us to wander with the wretched and the outcasts than to sit, crowned with roses, at the banquets of the rich. We are weary of these inequalities which make us the enemies of each other; we would put an end to the furies which are ever bringing people into hostile collision, and all of which arise from the bondage of the weak to the strong under the form of slavery, serfage, and service. After so much hatred we long to love each other, and for this reason are we enemies of private property and despisers of the law.

(14 November 1961)

Put on trial for his part in a plot involving the fabrication of counterfeit money, Pablo and his comrades took advantage of the trial and used it as a political forum.

I don’t have a strictly private life. For many years the apartments I’ve lived in with my wife were open to the members of our organization, to our friends and our political sympathizers, to a great number of people. During the war and the Nazi occupation of Europe, Israelites or men of the Resistance of all nationalities hunted by the Nazi services naturally found refuge at our home. When the Algerian revolution began in 1954, and Algerian militants were in turn pitilessly hunted down by the police services and terrorists under the orders of colonialism, my wife and I told the Algerian comrades to do us the honor of considering our home at their entire disposal. It was the same in Amsterdam.

We hope to continue in this way until the end of our days, today aiding our Algerian brothers to the best of our abilities, tomorrow our black brothers of Angola and South Africa, our Indio brothers of Latin America, our brothers from everywhere, oppressed and exploited men fighting for the liberty and dignity of man.

This attitude came to us naturally, and not at all through any special merit. Personally, I always felt myself to simply be a man who had completely made his own the wisdom contained in the verse of our poet of Antiquity, Menander: I am a man, and nothing that is human is foreign to me.

But, during the long life I’ve lived in the organization in which I have the honor of being a member, while trying to dominate the egoistic and narcissistic tendencies of our being, I’ve also learned how to accomplish those things necessary in relation to a political and social goal, and not only those things that were personally agreeable and easy. I at least wanted to act in accordance with that rules of social morality, more or less successfully. I lived the cataclysm of fascism in Germany and Europe of the 1930’s as a militant, and I also lived through the cataclysms of the Second World War as a militant. From all this I drew the conclusion that a certain dose of personal courage, intelligence, and critical spirit is necessary in order for every citizen to have the freedom to live, for the horrors of war to be avoided, so that society not fall under the yoke of privileged bureaucratic minorities. Neither the danger of fascism nor that of war and dictatorship are absent in the current world. This can be clearly seen in what is happening in France, in what’s happening in Africa from Algeria to Angola and South Africa, in what’s happening in Latin America, from Cuba to Chile, in what’s happening with East-West relations, from Laos to Berlin.

I will limit myself to a few words on the Algerian drama, which is at the heart of the affair that you are judging, Monsieur President, Messieurs Judges. I wonder if the Christian and civilized men and women of Western Europe, wallowing in their current relative material comfort, realize deep down what has been going on for the past seven years in Algeria, what is currently happening in the hell of Angola, or the drama, for example, of the Congolese children dying of hunger in the thousands. If they realize to what point our civilization is only a matter of an epidermis that it suffices to scratch for an incredible potential for cruelty, violence and injustice toward our brothers – the people of color cruelly oppressed and exploited – to escape.

Have we in Western Europe truly realized the horrors of the colonial war in Algeria, that fact that there have been seven years of massacres and torture, around a million deaths on the Algerian side, more than two million poor peasants chased from their villages, displaced, “regrouped” in temporary camps, more than 250,000 Algerian refugees in Morocco and Tunisia, most of whom are elderly, women, and children who are war orphans, more than 300,000 Algerians in prisons and concentration camps in France itself? Yet these figure appear in the official French press and in the countless literary and other documents that have been produced by this colonial war, the most atrocious of our century.

Can we simply close our eyes on these facts and each of us “peacefully” live his selfish little life without bothering with the “demon of politics?” I don’t think so. I firmly believe that politics, i.e., the science of the knowledge, the organization, and the management of society, must occupy a primordial place in the life of every free and critical being, in order to avoid disasters, to lead humanity as quickly as possible towards the abolition of oppression, exploitation, and to the most complete possible flourishing of the individual.

Monsieur President, messieurs judges, for the past 32 years, from the beginning of my life as a conscious being, I have had the honor of being part of the historical movement created by Leon Trotsky and currently known under the name of the 4th International. It was in the ranks of this movement that I learned the true meaning of the combat for socialism and the socialist society of tomorrow. This meaning was momentarily obscured by the traits of degeneration and bureaucratic deformation that the backward character of Czarist Russia and the prolonged international isolation of the October revolution imprinted upon workers’ power, in the USSR and elsewhere during the Stalin era.

But we have already impetuously, irreversibly entered the era of the worldwide expansion of the socialist revolution, which will give a victorious vigor to all the fundamental ideas in the matter of socialist economy, democracy, and culture elaborated and defended against all odds for many decades by Leon Trotsky and the 4th International.